Littoral

When the train curved out of Jasper and the last trace of town dissolved into trees, the air shifted. The mountains widened. The sky opened. Burned slopes unfurled beside the train, charred trunks rising with a patient stillness. The valley floor stretched in long, unbroken lines, marked by fire and by gentler seasons. Light moved across the land in a slow, steady sweep.

My body answered.

There was a small moment, easy to miss, when the hum beneath the floorboards matched the rhythm of my breath. The seat vibrated lightly under my palms, and the world outside the window moved with the same calm I felt inside my chest. Not metaphorically. Physically. My nervous system eased into the pace of the land passing by.

I leaned into the window, letting the cold glass hold the weight of my forehead. A thin smear of dust along the frame caught the fading light. Outside, nothing rushed. The view revealed what was there: blackened trunks, ashen soil, new shoots pushing through what remained. A record of burning and continuing.

Something opened in me.

The land offered only its presence. No message. No direction. Just itself. Something inside loosened, some long-held habit of arranging meaning or shaping myself around what I encountered. Here, in a landscape carrying its own history, witnessing came easily.

A faint ache surfaced. It moved with the slow rhythm of the train, leaning toward relief. The relief of existing without tightening, without shaping myself for anything outside me. It brought memories of times when breath caught high in my chest, when I tried to fold myself into places that offered no room. The grief in that memory rose and thinned without overtaking. I looked again at the dark forms of trees that had been through fire and continued to stand.

As the land shifted, snow-dusted slopes giving way to river flats catching the last light, my body's signals became unmistakable. They pointed not toward interpretation but toward a direction I could feel. With nothing pressing against them, they held their own certainty.

Dusk pooled in the valley. The burned trunks blurred into silhouettes.

The longing inside me stretched out without urgency. It gestured toward spaces shaped by sincerity, toward a pace of living with room for breath. When the window darkened and my reflection merged with the last lines of the valley, I saw my face softened by the dim interior light.

The land outside held its shape.