"Perhaps this nameless nymph had drawn her here, she certainly hadn’t been walking with any particular place or aim in mind. "
Almanac: November '23, "November Palette"
Dear Reader,
It is Wednesday and thus I am a day late again with my publication. I hope you’ll forgive me. But if you want my opinion, today’s story is worth the day’s delay. I had intended to write something more in the form of Almanac entries-past, but yesterday when I sat down to do the final edits, I opted instead to rewrite the entire thing. I got inspired and thought, “what would the story be like if it was her story instead of mine?”
Plus, I have a very lovely opportunity that I am currently relishing in, my godmother has allowed me to use her cabin in the mountains as a writer’s retreat. I may never come back down. Suffice it to say that I had the time to rewrite the whole story yesterday, time I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Time for which I am grateful.
The mission for the rest of the week while I am up here is to really dig in on the Orion short story that I have been teasing for the past month. I WILL have some portion of it worth publishing for next Tuesday, even if I have to redact the whole thing later when it proves to not match up with the canon.
For today, I hope you enjoy my new twist on the nature story. In a moment of either inspiration or foolishness, I recently described my writing style as nature-adjacent. I think it’s kind of funny, so I’ll stick with it. This story is what I mean when I say that.
-Charles
November Palette
The last of the cornfields had been cut and stashed away for winter silage, and a whole new world was opened up for her to wander.
Only a few weeks prior, the drying stalks would rattle their no trespassing warning, threatening to block her passage or turn her about if she ventured into their maze, and she would heed that warning even though it felt like losing. Now she had a choice, she could skirt the edges of fields, sticking to the familiar shade of the hackberry trees as she had all summer or she could be bold at long last and cut across the newly open hills where the dry crackling of the husk, stalk, and spent cob underfoot no longer whispered forbidding words.
Being in the previously off-limits fields felt like breaking the chains that had bound her to her desk all October. She’d just as soon lay down and sleep forever before painting another fall foliage scene, no matter how beautifully the evening light danced upon the increasingly translucent leaves of the ever-showy maples. She’d had enough of the star performers of the October forests towering over, hemming her in.
She reveled in the openness, wandering far and wondering at the paradox of the cold air that forced her to layer up coupled with the blistering sun that seemed to bake her through her clothes. Only when she began to shiver did she notice that the warmth of the sun had been stolen away. She found the culprit, a shapeless mat of gray cloud had crept in overhead, already almost to the wintry white eastern horizon. Before she could fully consider turning for home, a cold mist came drifting down on top of her, drifting and curling, a premonition of snow in months to come.
She often relished the relief brought on by the summer rains, but this was something different, this was clear to be the first cold rain of the season. Staying out in this storm, unprepared as she was, would likely reward her with a day or three of the sniffles, if not something worse.
If this were one of those summer storm she’d be drenched to the bone already, but she wouldn’t be worried at how far she was from home. Summer rain upon overly warm skin is welcome. But winter rains are the sort that make you wish it’d just snow already. This first November rain hinted at that winter weather. But it seemed this storm was in no hurry to catch her exposed. It lacked the suddenness and intensity of its summer cousins, much more akin to the slow, steady, relentless rains of the February flood-season.
She made it home without too much chill and hung her wet things by the furnace to dry, watching entranced as the dusting of misty droplets transmuted into steam. She pointedly did not look at her desk with her paints still sitting atop it, practically vibrating with their over-saturated intensity. The painfully bright yellows and oranges and reds almost drove her back out into the rain. She compromised and sat down on the stoop of the open door to watch the storm finish rolling into her valley.
Poised on the edge, toes loosely gripping the boundary between warm hearth and cold storm, she looked out into the soft mist, now turned to slow, steady rain. Something looked out of place. It took her quite some time to realize what it was. An unexpected color, something not at all like the ones she was avoiding.
As she studied tree trunks from her stoop, she felt her jaw unclench, heard the crackling and popping behind and below her ears, noticed her shoulder blades were akimbo and rolled them around reassuringly. She became more and more relieved, both by the curiosity growing within her heart and by the muted character of the color itself. The adjacent tree trunks that had been brown and gray all summer were now darkened almost black by the cold rain.
She went to her desk and pulled out her paints and looked at them, then out the window, then back at the paints. It was no use. Sitting inside, warm and dry, she couldn’t wrap her mind around this new color. She had just rushed indoors to get out of the storm, and now she was itching to go back out into it, perhaps to build a new palette, something to soothe her spirit, something with an alternative character to the overwhelming intensity of October foliage.
She bundled back up, including specific layers for the rain this time, armed and ready for battle. One day, if she succeeded, perhaps they’d paint her, the warrior artist on a mission to find new inspiration for a November palette.
She began attending to the changes in color that came from the wetness of the otherwise familiar surroundings.
The corn fields had reflected flatly during her earlier walk, hardly any color at all. But under the spell of cold November rain, each remnant, broken stalk showed itself to be delicate gray or lush orange, and deep golds and rusty browns hid in the folded shadows.
She let herself be drawn onward by a liquid glimmer here and a damp reflectivity there, as though she walked a dusky gray path lit by discrete but welcoming lanterns. As she wound her way over the hills and through the fields, among the trees in the adjacent copses, she searched out artifacts with which to construct her new palette. She picked up fallen leaves, transformed by the cold rain from a dull brown to a rich burgundy. She snipped sprays of tall, dry grasses grown from pale yellow into vibrant gold. She pried flakes of tree bark slicked to a lustrous silver from a drab tan.
She continued collecting little bits of nature and imagined a palette quite unlike October. This new palette wouldn’t inspire international tourists to flock in droves to photograph the drama. It would be a more reserved affair.
She imagined a warm, dry den in a state of steady, methodical preparation for bitter cold.
She imagined a time of cleaning house, of repairing the leaky downspout, of ensuring all the infrastructure is ready for the coming hibernation.
She felt her own anxieties diminish as her palette grew.
The spontaneous path brought her down hill, to a noisy little creek and a small pool watched over by the muse she didn’t even know she’d been seeking, a sprawling sycamore tree. Perhaps this nameless nymph had drawn her here, she certainly hadn’t been walking with any particular place or aim in mind.
The sycamore defined the space.
It leaned over the wading pool, spreading its branches even wider than it was tall.
It stretched up to pull the raindrops down from the sky with branches twisted and broken by storms and regrown with patience and an unrelenting urge to expand.
She could not look away from the great tree. Its spell held no malice, but was nonetheless irresistible. As her gaze explored its buttressed and twisted roots where they held the bank in place and its tenacious leaves clung to their branches as the raindrops fitfully sought to dislodge them and its pale white upper canopy limbs branched beyond count, she saw that this tree held within it, all of the colors she sought for her November palette.
The scaly knobs at its base showed her the gray black of the rain-soaked forest.
The long flakes of bark in the middle canopy showed her the ruddy tan of the remnant corn stalks.
The smooth white skin of the upper bark showed her the tufted tops of the sun-dried annual flowers that scattered about the edges of the crop fields.
The oldest leaves clung to the branches, gnarled and twisted and brown showing her the color of most all the deciduous trees that still clung to life this late in the season.
The intermediate leaves still bore their golden yellow-orange plumage and showed her the color of the dried grasses that grow in clumps throughout the pastures like flocks of golden clouds pretending to be sheep upon the hills.
Against all expectation, there were even a few leaves who clung to their green, tucked away in the interior of the tree where they’d been sheltered from the ravages of ultraviolet light all summer, these reminded her not to neglect to paint the evergreens that still dot the landscape and carry within them the promise of new green to come again next year.
Her head and face were wet and her legs were muddy and she her core was slowly losing warmth in spite of having layered up against the storm. But she had what she needed and far more than she’d hoped for when she’d mustered the courage to brave the storm. So she turned for home, content that no matter the subject matter for her November paintings, she could count on the spirit of the sycamore to imbue her color palette with the magic of that first cold rain of the season.