🌿November: A Walk with Memory

🌿November: A Walk with Memory

🌿Walking Among Fallen Leaves

✍️ Author’s Note

This reflection grew from a few early morning scribbles written in the soft light of November — a month that remembers more than it reveals. Nature, memory, and the quiet rhythm of the seasons have shaped much of my life. In revisiting these thoughts, I wanted to capture the gentle wisdom that November offers: that we do not walk alone, and that even the fading of the year carries a quiet promise of renewal.

Photo © Felix A. A. Houtzager

As the days grow shorter and the light softens, I feel the season’s cadence. Life, too, moves to the same rhythm. I have always been a man of all seasons, but autumn carries its own quiet charm — the beauty of decline without despair. Albert Camus captured it well: “Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is like a new flower.”

November is unique.
It is the month I was born — in the middle of the night, during a snowstorm at the edge of a Dutch wood, in Soestduinen. A time of war, though I knew nothing of it then. My father, with his characteristic twinkle, later called it “a good wine year.” Perhaps he was right. November has always felt like a month that remembers things: history, loss, resilience, renewal. It forces me to think about the ebb and tide of life. Time and tide wait for no man.

Nature taught me honesty early.
As a child I once found a small bird beneath a tree, cold and still from the night. My mother and I wrapped it gently and buried it beside our dogs — our little animal cemetery. It was my first lesson in the quiet truth that all living things must one day return to the earth. Seasons teach this better than any philosophy.

If one has a connection to nature, November invites a certain kind of walk — at daybreak, among the fallen leaves. They are damp and fading, yet still beautiful. When I pick them up, they make me think about what has been loved and what has been neglected. Memory behaves in much the same way.

I often think of my brother Felix on these mornings.
He walked at dawn every day, gathering strength from the first light. I think of him now as I walk. Some people close to me left the table of life too early — before dessert, before cognac, before the laughter of the final stories. Their absence accompanies me on these November mornings.

This is what memory does: it walks beside us, reminding us that all leaves fall to the ground, and that we too must one day fall. Yet November is not only a season of melancholy; it also offers the promise of beginnings. The leaves fade, the colours soften — but beneath the quiet decay, something prepares itself for spring.

When one walks in November, one does not walk alone.
One walks with memory.
Winter approaches — the season I favour least, though I respect it — and I am reminded that every ending carries within it a quiet seed of renewal.

William J J Houtzager, Aka WJJH, November 2025

📌Blog Excerpt

As November arrives with its softened light and fallen leaves, I find the season invites a different kind of clarity. This is the month of my birth, and perhaps for that reason it always draws my memories closer. Walking at daybreak among the damp leaves, I think of the people who shared this journey but left the table of life too early. November teaches gently: through decline without despair, through endings that still hold the seed of renewal. In this quiet season, one walks not alone, but with memory.