The Woods Are Quiet and Fine

By Peter Bowden
The morning was cold, but not cold enough. The damp air hung low over the pine needles and the red clay. In early spring, the woods breathed slow and quiet. The river moved steady in the distance, like a man who knew where he was going. You walked because it was good to walk, and the ground gave under your boots the way it should. The trees were tall and thin. Loblolly pines, mostly. Some sweetgum and oak, their buds just pushing out like green fists. A squirrel ran along a branch and vanished. You could hear birds you couldn’t name. The woods didn’t care what you called them. The sun came through in slants and touched the earth in long strips. It felt like it had been waiting all winter for this moment, for the chance to be warm again. There was nothing to say, and so nothing was said. You walked past deer tracks and an old fence that had no purpose anymore. Maybe it never had one. The woods held onto things like that—forgotten, rusted, quiet. You kept walking because you wanted to see what came next. That was enough. That was always enough.

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