More than the deep freeze that is February, November is my least favorite month of the year.

It’s where the autumnal chill ceases to be charming because a moment comes where you step outside and suddenly it’s November 2nd. There’s a shift that has taken place while you were sleeping. The wind has acquired an edge that at first feels a tad impolite, but then you look at the dwindling crimson and sienna majesty that is fall foliage and you realize that this stiff wind has a greater purpose. It’s gonna blow without conscience and it won’t stop until all of the trees are relieved of their most stubborn multicolored holdouts. The vividness that we grew accustomed to for most of the year is gone, and it won’t be back until spring prevails in what feels like an eternity of many months.

Hello, November. Somehow I forgot that you were a part of the annual bargain. Again.

And all of this is nothing to speak of the daylight savings rollback and the fact that I’ll be once again crossing my office threshold before the sun has a fair shot at showing itself in the sky.  Don’t get me wrong, I love winter for many of its finest aspects— what I hate is being made to let go of the year’s more gentle parts on someone else’s terms. Humans by nature are a bit challenged when it comes to processing change, and it is probably for this reason that I have such a hard time watching the remaining leaves get blown away with dispassionate finality. I dislike it so much that I almost take it personally.

The fall season, when you look at it like a parade float, is undeniably dazzling when done up correctly. But at the same time, the entire experience is fleeting. You hardly have a chance to appreciate the finer details before it has passed you by, been completely dismantled, and is then left to be unceremoniously swept up in forgotten heaps of crumbled detritus.

Maybe I’m feeling this way because I spent all week gazing out a classroom window that offered a front row view of the Alps. I spent our professor’s time studying a clutch of evergreens anchored to a mountain’s base as their pointy green tips drew my eye to leafwork covering the entire slope in a burgundy haze. The colorful pattern changed daily, too. In the foreground, just on the other side of the window’s bars, I paid particular attention to a solitary young maple. On the first day, the stocky branches shot upward while still protected by layers of golden expanse. By midweek however, I noted that I could see more and more of the branches’ bony fingers, and almost none of the leaves remained to keep these limbs looking virile and fleshy. Instead they had fallen victim to the mid-week’s blustery weather.

Winter is coming, and November doesn’t afford you the luxury of denying this as you once did in October.

Autumn’s beauty can’t last, but there’s also something to be said for hunkering down in winter and remembering that this exile in hibernation won’t last forever. In many ways, the months of November through March are a bit like a military deployment: the days can drag and seem dull, but ultimately the weeks really will fly by. Prettier days will come again in no time, and they might even come sooner than we all think. Of course, this didn’t feel like much consolation for me as I stared out the window and watched the last of the year’s lush beauty get swept away— but at the same time it was better than nothing.

Sometimes it can be hard to believe it in the moment, but regardless of what’s going in your world at any one time, additional beauty is just up ahead.

So until then, it’s all of us in transition. As for me, every day that I sat in the classroom, the landscape became gradually yet markedly different. The flame and sunshot of the brightest leaves wore away, and that left me looking for new things to focus on (the class itself was pretty boring). And perhaps by the time I got to the end of the course, I had rediscovered something important about this strange ritual of annual hello-goodbye. At the end of the week there were freshly-minted sources of artistry as early whispers of the new season flipped a switch and recaptured my interest. The winter clouds, as they labored over the tops of the lowest alpine peaks, managed to leave behind a dusting of powder that looked like the world’s greatest magic trick. The first snow of the season was upon us, and lucky me I got to be there to see it.

A new representation of Mother Nature’s majesty. November’s gonna be okay.