Today I spent the morning on a brokers tour. If you’ve never heard of one, a bunch of real estate agents visit each other’s listings and provide anonymous feedback on the listing price, pros, and cons of the house. Sometimes that feedback is what a listing agent needs to nudge a seller toward installing shelves, or painting, or reducing the price a bit. Sometimes a buyer’s agent walks into a house that hadn’t caught their buyers’ attention yet, and a little matchmaking happens. I like them. I like the houses, and I like my colleagues, who are funnier in someone else’s kitchen than they are in an email asking you about contingencies.
What I noticed most today, though, was the drive between homes and where I chose to point my camera.
At the houses, my camera filled up. Interior photos of features, a few atmospheric shots of the water whenever the house was on a lake. Between the houses, nothing. Normally there’s a view that makes me pause and get out the camera, or just sit there for a minute reflecting on what a gorgeous place I live in. Today there was nothing to pause for. Everything was a dull yellow, a burnt orange, or brown. A layer of dead leaves covered the ground, and while it was warm, it was also damp. I guess stick season is here, even though it felt like a few days ago there was still decent cover on the trees.
And I know it’s going to get uglier before the snow comes and washes everything in beauty and glitter again.
Most of what gets written about this place in autumn is really about October. Mary Oliver would have us love October like it’s our last chance and who can argue with that. Robert Frost, who knew many a New Hampshire fall, got November, though. He knew there was a beauty here where others might see only absence.
I’m writing this at 2:30 in the afternoon with every light in the house on, because it’s raining, which makes an already short day shorter. The browns have invited their friend gray to the party, and gray is having a moment. In about two hours it will be dark. It would be entirely natural to mourn the light, to feel a little melancholy that so many friends have moved to their winter homes somewhere warmer and sunnier. But, instead, I’m thinking of all the ways that we find the beauty here, even in November, in so many different ways.
Earlier this week I met a friend for a drink and an appetizer at the Speakeasy at the Wakefield Inn, which I highly recommend. We’d both just voted, and our first order of business was practical: where do we go on a Monday for an equally good cocktail, now that everyone is on winter hours and mostly closed Monday and Tuesday? The bartender had a suggestion. I’m going next week, and I’ll let you know if it’s any good.
Then we caught up the way you do in a small town. We talked about our kids. We talked about how good the turnout was, and how much we love the Gafney Library, which is connected to the town hall where we all vote. We talked about the different bartenders around town, and who makes a cocktail a little too strong versus who it’s better to just order a simple mixed drink from. I say that as someone who still spends a couple of nights a week on the other side of a bar.
Then we both started yawning and looking out the window at how dark it was getting. Friends, it was 4:45. By 7 I was home in my pajamas, uncertain I’d be awake long enough to watch any polls close at all.
That’s the month. It doesn’t ask for much, and what it offers is different than what came before or what will come after, so people quietly adjust. And November lets us do that in our own ways at our own pace.
I have a friend who gets out and walks every afternoon at about 2. She’s out there collecting daylight while it’s still on offer, so that by the time it starts fading, she doesn’t feel she missed her chance at it. And even though I’m rarely able to join her, seeing her photos of those mid-afternoon walks in the light always brings a smile to my face and encourages me to get out, too.
There’s a gentleman I often see at Lino’s in town, all year round. His habitual order is toast and coffee. Which stood out to me as someone who loves diners, but doesn’t really like to eat early in the morning, or breakfast food much at all (I know, unpopular opinion). I first noticed the oatmeal last fall, when it joined the rotation, and I confirmed it again recently through careful but not stalkerish observation. He’s adding oatmeal again this fall, sort of like a bear preparing for hibernation. It isn’t really about caring what the man, who I haven’t ever had a conversation with, despite a couple of attempts, eats for breakfast. It’s about living in a place where observation across years is how you get to know people, even the ones you don’t really know.
And I notice it in myself. This is the month I start wondering where I put the box with all the hats and gloves. Whether I threw out those boots that were on their last leg in the spring, or whether I stowed them for the first few weeks of the season. It’s when I move meetings for a quick drink with a friend to 4 instead of 6. It’s when I appreciate every warm day, and every bit of light, a little more than I did in July.
None of that is sad. It’s just not as brilliant and vibrant as October, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. October is the show. November is when you start getting ready for cozy season, one small adjustment at a time.
The snow will come and do its glitter work. Until then, I’m always happy to meet up for a 4:00 drink!
Here’s to gray days and friends and colleagues who make them bright anyway.
🍂Jenn
Keys to the Lakes
