Never mind the “gales” of November, this month offers calm days too, but nobody ever writes songs about them.
I’d like to go on record as an advocate for those beautiful silvery gray November days that slip by so unnoticed—the “calms” of November.
One such day was Sunday, November 7, memorable not only as beautiful but also as the day that time switched from Daylight Saving back to regular earth time.
How can a day go wrong when your first thought on waking is that an entire extra hour is available? What could be more luxurious?
On that November morning as I tiptoed into the kitchen to start the coffee brewing, I peered out the window and noticed that the surface of Devil Track Lake was a silver-colored mirror, reflecting the rising sun in silvery-gray beams. The day was perfectly calm.
Across the lake, bare brown tree branches reflected on the lake’s surface and magically transformed into silver. A solitary eagle flying low came into view, crossing my line of vision, its white and glossy black feathers gleaming in the light as it cruised the shoreline for breakfast. Since the whitefish were running, the eagle was probably in for a wonderful fishy breakfast.
There’s a warmth to these rare calm November days that dissipates with winter’s first real snow. But as beautiful and spectacular as white vistas of snow are, there is something soothing, calming about silver November days such as this.
All this philosophical stuff passed through my brain as I flipped the coffee maker button and began my morning breakfast ritual, but my thoughts were interrupted by a loud and incessant noise coming from the front deck.
Looking out the window, I saw a small but fervent chickadee sitting on the deck railing, looking right into my living room and directly at me. I watched as it opened its beak and blasted out a dee dee dee.
Nothing shy about this bird. It wanted food, but with the recent warm weather, I hadn’t given any thought to bird feeding and was caught short. Where was the bird food?
“Dick,” I called to my husband who was somewhere in the house. “Do you know where we put the sunflower seeds last spring?”
In a container, buried somewhere in the basement was his answer. So much for peace and quiet or even coffee for that matter. The little bird clearly understood the “squeaking wheel gets oiled” axiom and kept up its noisemaking.
So rather than sitting down for a peaceful cup of coffee, I first rummaged through the usual basement chaos of garden tools, dog crates and cardboard boxes until finding the sunflower seeds.
Meanwhile the sounds of Mr. Chickadee yodeling on the deck railing rang through the quiet November morning. He did not stop the racket until I scattered a bucket of seeds for him and his cohorts and they settled down to normal chickadee squabbling over food.
I settled down to a nice cup of coffee and thoroughly enjoyed the satiny dove gray enchantment of a calm November day.
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