Borrowed Light

The first colour of the day belongs to the river.

Before the sun has cleared the horizon, the Athabasca has already begun collecting light. Pale blues drift into silver, and silver slips quietly into something harder to name. Every ripple takes hold of the morning and pulls it apart before gently stitching it back together again.

Across the valley, the spruce are already awake.

Their trunks stand dark against the riverbank, but their tops disappear into the haze until the forest seems unfinished. One tree slips quietly into the next. The spaces between them dissolve. From a distance, it no longer feels like looking at thousands of trees.

It feels like remembering a forest.

Nothing is in a hurry.

The air carries the smell of damp earth, pine needles and cold water. Yesterday’s warmth is gone. The morning settles against your face with just enough chill to make you tuck your hands into your pockets.

A raven calls somewhere beyond the bend.

You never see it.

Its voice hangs over the river for a moment before the haze takes that too.

Then a muted circle of orange begins to gather behind the smoke.

Not all at once.

Not with the confidence we’ve been taught to expect.

It simply hangs there above the trees. Soft enough to look at. Quiet enough that it feels less like the beginning of a day than the beginning of a thought.

Its light finds the river first.

A narrow path of copper stretches across the current, breaking apart with every small wave before quietly finding itself again. It never settles into a reflection. It keeps moving, changing shape with the water beneath it.

A fish rises once.

The circles drift outward until they become part of everything else.

Then the river carries on as though nothing happened.

Fireweed catches the light before the grass does. Drops of dew cling to thin green blades, each holding its own tiny sunrise. A spider’s web, invisible only moments ago, hangs between two stems like strands of fine glass.

The haze lingers without trying to hide anything. Instead, it softens the conversation between one thing and the next. River becomes shoreline. Shoreline becomes forest. Forest drifts upward until it is impossible to say where the trees end, and the sky begins.

You stay a little longer than you meant to.

The bank is still damp from the night, darkening the toes of your boots. The river slips past without asking anything of you. Somewhere behind your shoulder, a squirrel begins arguing with the morning while the first mosquitoes drift lazily out from the willows, as if they’ve only just remembered they’re supposed to be working.

For a little while, it is enough simply to look.

Then the light changes.

Not suddenly.

Just enough.

The orange fades toward gold. Shadows begin gathering beneath the spruce. The far bank remembers itself. Individual branches emerge from what had only been shape and colour. Stones appear along the shoreline.

Nothing about the valley has changed.

Only the light has decided where to rest.