Where the Light Waits

By Peter Bowden


He stood on the trail where the earth still smelled of morning—deep green underfoot, wildflowers brushing his legs like old friends remembering his name. The mountains curved in quiet judgment behind him, shouldering the sky, watching, always watching. He had come to Alaska for something he couldn’t quite name—maybe solitude, maybe clarity—but in that moment, he only felt the wind threading through his shirt, like the ghost of someone he'd once loved whispering, you made it.

The valley ahead stretched wide and endless, cut with a silver ribbon of river. He had walked miles that day, through silence and sun, his breath syncing with the land. He didn’t rush. Not anymore. He paused often to listen—to birds, to bees, to the slow, patient erosion of time. He felt old things stir inside him: boyhood curiosity, grief worn smooth by years, the kind of hope that doesn’t shout but simply hums, low and true.

He smiled—for himself. For the boy who once dreamed of wild places. For the man who had found one. And for the quiet promise that there would always be more trails to walk, more peaks to witness, more light waiting just around the bend.

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