November’s Second Movement

Fall – Week 48 – On Velvet Stags and Suspended Time

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures – and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

A young stag has taken up residence in my neighbor’s front yard. I’ve seen him there, his legs tucked beneath him like a house cat, watching the world pass with dark, velvet eyes that seem to hold centuries of knowing. Cars pass, dogs bark, squirrels run along, yet he remains, unperturbed, as if he has discovered some profound secret about stillness that we’ve forgotten in our human hurrying. He sits there for hours, this wild creature choosing meditation in the midst of our neighborhood, teaching us that sometimes the most radical act is simply to be still, to witness without needing to participate.

His presence feels perfectly timed, for after the wild winds that ushered in the Beaver Moon have calmed, after November announced itself with such fierce certainty, something shifts. The month settles into its deeper rhythm. Not the dramatic entrance but the profound residence. Now comes the hushed exhale, as if the earth, having declared the changing season with such force, finally gives herself permission to rest.

Here in Colorado, this second movement of November feels especially profound. The mountains have drawn their white blankets higher since those first wild days. The aspens that danced so frantically in the early winds now stand naked and still against the sky. The very air has changed its quality. Where once it carried leaves and urgency, it now moves with deliberate slowness, settling into something sharper, cleaner, each breath visible. Each moment held longer in the thinning light, as if autumn has finally exhaled all its restlessness.

Watch how the garden surrenders its posture without protest. The sunflowers that stood so tall and proud now bow their heavy heads to the earth, offering their seeds to whoever might need them. The morning glory vines that climbed with such determination all summer have turned to paper, to whispers, to memories traced against the fence. Even the soil seems to exhale and soften, no longer holding itself quite so firmly, accepting the weight of fallen leaves like a quilt being pulled up, preparing for the deep sleep that’s coming.

The geese understand this lesson. They return now by their thousands, their voices carrying across the cooling air like messages from another world. Each morning and evening, their great Vs write temporary poems across the sky, reminding us that some journeys require the wisdom of community. That there is strength in knowing when to stay and when to go. They settle into the stubbled corn fields with a confidence that speaks of generations of knowing. This place, this time, this necessary pause in their endless conversation between seasons. Nothing is truly wasted in nature’s economy of letting go.

The afternoons are as yet still warm here, a gift of golden hours when the sun remembers summer even as the shadows grow long. And, in the foothills, we wait for snow that has not yet come. A blessing of lingering warmth, but also a worry that grows with each cloudless dawn. This is the new November: beautiful and unsettling in equal measure, these warm days a gift we’re not entirely sure we should accept. We watch the peaks and wonder when the white will finally come.

The hours feel suspended in time. When you can shed your jacket and feel the sun on your skin one moment, then watch your breath cloud the air as the cold finally arrives with evening. And with it, the sky’s most extravagant show. The last week our sunsets have become wild artists, painting the sky in colors that have no names, creating shapes that shift and morph. One moment a dragon, the next a ship, then dissolving into pure color that makes the mountains glow as if lit from within.

These sunset shapes show that November invites us to keep seeing differently. In the growing darkness, in the stripped-bare branches, in the quieting earth, we’re invited to notice what we missed in summer’s abundance. The architecture of trees reveal themselves. The shape of the land emerges from beneath its green disguise. Even sound travels differently - the call of a single raven can fill an entire valley, each note clear and profound in the stillness.

This is what November knows: that rest is not emptiness but fullness of a different kind. The earth isn’t idle; it’s gathering itself, tending its deep fires, preparing for the long dream of winter. Below the surface, roots are storing energy, seeds are holding their secrets close, the very soil is rebuilding itself through the slow alchemy of decay and transformation. What looks like ending is actually beginning, just at a pace our hurried human hearts sometimes struggle to appreciate.

We’re invited into this same rhythm, this same grace, even as we resist it. November can feel like a thief, stealing our light, our warmth, our long days of doing. We dread the darkness, the cold, the months of confinement ahead. And yet. November asks us to tend our own inner embers, to stop adding fuel to every fire, to let some things burn down to coals that can smolder quietly through the dark months ahead. It’s a time for listening to the wisdom that only emerges in stillness. The knowledge that our bodies hold, the truths that whisper rather than shout, the understanding that comes not from doing but from being.

The young stag in the yard knows this. The geese descending on the harvested fields know this. Even the smallest sparrows gleaning the forgotten corners know this. They don’t question the value of rest, the necessity of pause, the wisdom of seasons. They simply embody it, without question or doubt.

As darkness comes earlier each day, as the world pulls its energy inward and downward, we’re reminded that this too is holy work - this letting go, this listening, this patient tending of what matters most. November teaches us that sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is nothing at all. To sit like that young stag, alert but calm, present to the world without needing to change it, trusting that this too is part of the great turning, the endless conversation between light and dark, noise and silence, holding on and letting go.

In this stillness, in this growing quiet, we might just hear what we’ve been too busy to notice all year long - the whisper of our own deep knowing. The quiet voice that knows that rest is not retreat but preparation, that we too need our winter.

---

—> What moments of natural wonder caught your attention this week? Please share your stories and photos in the comments below. Let’s experience nature’s gifts together.

As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting me.

Love,

Jane