It is easy to see beauty these days. Trees are shining with colour – brilliant yellow, scarlet, orange. Individual leaves on the ground show their glory. In sheltered places asters are still blooming, as are rudbeckia. I have one daisy that decided to bloom late, and while the blossoms on the hydrangea are not fresh, their colour is still beautiful.

It is easy to hear beauty these days. The wind rustles the leaves on the trees and sends waves lapping the rocks on the shore. Chickadees are calling to one another all day. Rain drops gently on the leaves still on trees.

I wonder if I will be able to see beauty in the world a month from now? The fresh red leaves will have faded to brown, become crumpled and brittle. The days will be grey and damp. I miss colour in November.

But hydrangea blooms cling to the trees and shrubs well into winter. Their colour fades, but they maintain their spherical structure. There is beauty in their shape. The trees lose their leaves, but their structure is revealed, trunk and branch. Thistles have already turned to brown, but their shape stands clear. Some plants will disappear as the lilies already have, but others like asters will still stand so that we can examine their structure. Will I be able to see the beauty of that pearly grey month?

The world becomes more and more silent as we move into December and January. Except when snow storms rage, the world is still, covered with a blanket of snow. Creatures sleep. But there is a beauty in that stillness and in the silence. Trees lay silent shadows on the snow when the sun shines, when the moon is out, reflections of that strong structure.

Light levels are low in November. Once there is snow in December, even if the days are shorter, the light seems more. The clouds are just too thick most November days. We seldom see blue. Yet, as long as I don’t define beauty as brilliant colour, there is beauty to be seen in the quiet colours and shapes.

I got to thinking about this because of a stanza of a rather long poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It reads, “I want to know if you can see Beauty / even when it is not pretty / every day. / And if you can source your own life / from its presence.” I think part of the problem with November comes if we define it as dreary. The dreariness enters our Spirit. As the month gets closer this year, I am going to look for the soft beauty of pearly grey.

Much of the rest of that poem I came across felt pretentious to me. List of things that don’t interest the poet – who you know, how much money you have, where you live, what planets square your moon. There are lists of things the poet does want to know, like if you can live with failure, if you can get up after a night of despair, bruised and weary, and still do what needs to be done. The point is good – it is what is inside that matters and how we carry on – but there is just a little too much.

One other stanza did speak to me though. It reads, “I want to know / if you can sit with pain / mine or your own / without moving to hide it / or fade it / or fix it.” This one is important. I have known people who immediately jump into problem solving mode. As soon as a burden is expressed, they have three solutions that can be tried. As soon as pain is spoken of, they set out to cure it.

Not that I want to hold on to pain. Not that I want to wallow in trouble. Not that I am opposed to fixing what can be fixed. But it seems important to acknowledge the hurt, the difficulty, the grief. Otherwise, we don’t understand why it is hard to fix it or acknowledge the times when there is no fix. Rather than hide the grief, it is important to be able to live with it and still find the beauty that there is in life.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation