Snowglobe snow falls in the late afternoon. November light: clear and sharp. Not much warmth here, not any season for sleeping rough and roofless, but sparkling as if our world has expanded. In an inexplicable way, the light seems washed full of hope.
The summer folks have fled elsewhere, to Florida condos or back to city jobs. The gardeners and landscapers have put away their rakes and trowels. Around the lake where I walk at midday, only the builders persist in their bulky jackets and gloves. There’s so few of us in town that me wandering by is the chance to stop and remark about stick season. At the lake’s pebbled edge, I dip in my fingers. Before long, ice will rim the bank.
Stick season and the wood stove’s warmth make my cats deliriously joyful. Rumaan Alam (such an amazing novelist!) writes in his intro to Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach:
Let’s agree to abandon forever the idea that the depiction of family life is the province of women artists, and therefore insubstantial. Let’s refuse to hear a sneer in the term domestic.
Stony Soil Vermont 
This time of year, and the cold/snow that is to come makes me want to be a bear and just hibernate in my bed with a good book and a cup of coffee, and the dogs or cats curled up with me for the long haul.
Agreed! Although we’re (mainly) a cat house here. 🙂
“The summer folks have fled elsewhere”…I guess the quiet can be nice. It’s a beautiful photo.
There’s a real place for a bit of silence, although winter stillness can be pretty darn lengthy here….
Ah yes, even in the South, November light is clear and sharp, not blunted by humidity and Summer dog days. November is the Time, in our area of unfreezing soil, to break out the broadfork and let the soil breathe cleansing North winds. Thanks for the post.
Such a different place on the planet. Here, the frost is slowly settling into the earth. Love the thought of soil breathing.
Indeed, a different place, yet I know from your writing how often in the evening we are actually gazing and marveling at the exact same moon!
And yes, the soil bellows like a Tupperware bowl being opened when the broadfork tilts.
I could never leave the beauty of snow in winter for a place where it’s always warm and brown.
Really — Vermont can be magical.