Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
The Colors of November
Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
The leaves are gone. Snow covers the ground this morning—plow-able, shovel-able snow. We’ve had single digit low temperatures. The skies have been cloudy with a touch of sun. Our ‘getting-ready-for-winter work’ is not quite finished. And this is not depressing news! The trees have entered their dormancy, their hibernation of sorts. Most of the action is below ground now. Let them have their rest. The ‘flurries’ and ‘dustings’ have added up to more snow than we expected, but I have to say, looking out the window as my feet hit the floor in the morning and seeing a blanket of snow makes me smile. We will trade these cold temps for some forties later this week, which will give us time to finish our ‘getting-ready-for-winter work.’ The gray of November is not really so gray—I found a palette of color around the yard this week!
How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun. –Vincent Van Gogh, artist
You are my sunshine! This is the time of year that Common Witch Hazel blooms! Isn’t that amazing?!
There are many languages that don’t make a distinction between green and blue and treat these as shades of one color. –Guy Deutscher, linguist
Orange is the happiest color. –Frank Sinatra, singer
The more basic the color, the more inward, the more pure. –Piet Mondrian, artist
Red is the ultimate cure for sadness. –Bill Blass, fashion designer
Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises. –Pedro Calderon de la Barca, playwright
Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight. –John Ruskin, artist and art critic
We in the North are entering our ‘hibernation’ time, so to speak, when most of the action takes place indoors. It can be a time of rest and renewal after a fervent and busy Spring, Summer, and Fall. Let yourself rest. During this rest time, there can also be an unexpected blossoming of inner work and creativity. What is your happiest color? Paint it! Wear it! What is your ultimate cure for sadness? Write about it! What makes you smile in the Winter time? Share that with someone! We are all shades of one color, the spirit of the Earth given to us by the true Spirit. Everlastingly.
Inhaling the Color
When the kids were younger, we spent hours each day on art projects—finger paints, crayons, sidewalk chalk, markers, watercolors, acrylic paints at the Fisher-Price easel with stubby, color-coded brushes, and many more. Emily was a visual learner and artist from a very young age. She held a pencil correctly when she was one year old, she drew detailed pictures of our family, and she would come home from kindergarten and describe the color and style of clothes and shoes her teacher wore (fast forward to Stitch Fix!) I can’t remember how old she was at the time, but she went through a period when she was coloring with crayons that she would put one in her mouth and pretend she was smoking. When I gently admonished her for emulating smoking, she replied that they were special good rainbow ones with vitamins and fruit! That memory was recently revived for her when she saw an ad for rainbow-colored personal essential oil diffusers—cylinder-shaped diffusers of essential oils that you inhale into your mouth and out your nose—just like her childhood idea!
Color is a scarce commodity in Nature as late Fall morphs into Winter. Our Thanksgiving weekend hike at Warner Lake County Park was devoid of much color, but we were able to find some interesting hues by looking closely at the gray-brown landscape. Red berries of a woodland perennial persisted among the pine needles. Red-violet branches of Red-twigged Dogwood brightened the lake shore, and scarlet berries of a Viburnum looked enticing against the sleepy gray background.
Rusty orange leaves cling to the understory Ironwood trees through most of the winter, making them easy to identify. Bittersweet vines produce vibrant red-orange berries perfect for Fall decoration.
Happy yellow-gold seedheads remain from a prolific-blooming wildflower. Golden stands of grass lined the ice-covered Warner Lake.
Healthy green moss covered a fallen tree, outlining the upended roots and trunk. A fallen cluster of green pine needles, thanks to a nibbling squirrel, intertwined with the brown needles that were shed earlier in the season.
The hiking day began with blue skies and active, fluffy clouds of white before a front of gray clouds and sprinkles covered the cerulean. A few days later the day ended with a rainbow-colored sunset painted on the western easel of sky.
One of the gifts of Winter, when the landscape is devoid of color, is the simplification of sight. With the leaves gone, the structure and essence of a tree is obvious. There are less things to look at—no flowers or colors to capture our attention for a second before it moves to the next thing. Time seems to slow a bit. The things that do capture our attention are worth noting and examining. Late Fall and Winter open up the opportunity to look closely at ourselves—what is our structure and essence? What is the understory of our life that has been covered up with the exuberance of Spring and Summer and that is now easier to identify? How do we outline a healthy life? How do we intertwine the old parts of ourselves that need to be shed with the green, growing parts that need to be expressed? The season of my life when the kids were young was busy, fun, full of laughter, love, and creativity—an exuberant, colorful Spring! Emily taught me that we can look at things differently, that we can re-create a negative into a positive, that we can breathe in the special healing rainbow goodness of Life.