By Rachel Barenblat, The Velveteen Rabbi 

I used to own a long, soft, narrow-wale corduroy dress that always seemed to call to me around this time of year. Its colors were muted: taupe and pale purple and deep fir-green. One day I realized that it matched the Berkshire hills in their November colors: the taupe brown of bare trees seen from a distance, the muted purple of distant hillsides at early twilight, the deep green of conifers on the highest parts of the hills.

I rejoice when springtime paints the hills chartreuse. I relish the boldness of their summer green coats. I thrill to their yellow and orange autumn garb, though that beauty feels bittersweet because it presages the cold season to come. And now we’re in the season I don’t look forward to: “stick season,” when the hills are bare and the nights are growing longer and plant life begins to go dormant because of the cold.

The challenge is finding the beauty in this spare, sere landscape — because it is still beautiful. The hills reveal their contours in a different way. Other neighborhood houses, once hidden by stands of trees, become visible again. The grass gives up on being green and begins to turn pale wintery gold. Hints of red pop against this muted backdrop: old apples still left on the trees, berries nestled among the thickets of sticks.

In my mind I anthropomorphize our local plants and trees and bushes, imagining that they heave a sigh of relief when their performative season ends and they can rest. Okay, that’s a stretch, but I know that the plants and trees that live here need to have a dormant season. It’s as though the earth herself is taking a Shabbes: some downtime, some time when she doesn’t have to produce (whether food or fruit or blossoms), some time when she can just rest and just be. Can I better learn that practice by paying attention to the world around me?

Instead of being (too) attached to any particular season’s gifts, I want to learn how to seek the beauty in whatever the world around me presents. Right now my task is retraining my eye to notice the gifts of New England November: the subtle gradations of color, the delicate traceries of bare branches, the sweetness to be found in this gentle, muted visual palette. Mother Nature isn’t always showy, but there’s always something worth noticing, if I can maintain the practice of being willing to see.

Featured Image: Berkshire Mountains in Late Fall, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

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