Here's what makes a November sky different from its October counterpart--or, for that matter, what we think of as a "fall" or "autumn" sky, or what stretches above and in front of us at any other time of year. The clouds are exactly that--clouds. Even as they shift across the sky and reveal patches of blue backlit by the sun, like a skylight in a Romanesque cathedral, they fill the sky in layers, to the point that they seem to become the sky itself, and to define not only the light, but the wind and chill that come from it.
However, there is absolutely no threat of rain, or any other kind of precipitation. One can feel just as confident of cycling under this sky as among Shakespeare's "darling buds of May" and not having one's skin moistened by anything that wasn't within his or her own body. (Whether or how much one sweats depends, of course, on one's conditioning and the strenuousness of the ride. Mine today wasn't very. ) The best thing about cycling under these conditions, at least to me, is that the light is nothing more or less than that: it's not the glaring sunlight that taxes light eyes and fair skins (like mine) and it's not diffuse or "painterly," as much as I appreciate and even enjoy that sort of illumination.
This is the sort of light that makes the things--like foliage--that were described with "fall" as prefixes attached to them in October become autumnal in the truest sense of that word.
This may seem odd to some of you, but I find none of this depressing. In fact, I quite enjoy it. Now I'm going to sound like exactly the Europhile (or, more specifically, Francophile) snob some of the people with whom I grew up suspected me of being, or having become. I think that autumnality or autumnalness (OK, if Sarah Palin can compare herself to Shakespeare, surely you can indulge me in this!) is not much respected, much less valued or celebrated, in American culture. I suppose it has to do with the notion that this country is supposed to be a place where one can start over and re-invent one's self, and its attendant value of youthfulness and novelty. The mature sexuality of French or Italian women or the ironic sense of the English--or, for that matter, the ability to accept life on its own terms while questioning one's self that seems to be part of a Germanic way of seeing--is not valued in the same way in America as that of youthful effusiveness and ebullience.
The quality of autumnalness I'm describing is what you might see in western New England if you get off Route 7, or if you take the back roads of the Adirondacks or the routes departmentales of the Vosges. I have done all of those things, on my bicycle; perhaps having done them in my youth shaped, in some way, my attitudes about cycling and much else in my life.
Will it lead me to be like this couple?:
They say that in the spring a young man's fancy turns to love. As if I would know about such things! But at this time of year, an older man's and, ahem, woman's fancies turn to...wait, do they have fancies? And if they do, will they be realized under this sky?:
I suspect that some of mine will be. However, I am sure that I will continue to encounter them, as I did today, from my trusty steed for all seasons:
