Silas Counts the High Quiet — Above the timberline, where cold air smelled like stone dust and pine sap, Silas eased his big tires from boulder to boulder. Read the full story →
Above the timberline, where cold air smelled like stone dust and pine sap, Silas eased his big tires from boulder to boulder. He had given himself a private challenge: count twelve kinds of quiet before the trail dipped into the valley. There was tire quiet, when rubber pressed rock with a soft grrk. There was shadow quiet under the cliffs. There was sky quiet, so wide it made his roof lights seem like tiny moons.
He paused on a flat gray slab and listened harder. The pines clicked their needles. A pebble ticked, ticked, ticked down a crack. “That makes nine,” Silas whispered, and his voice came back smaller from the wall.
Then the smallest pine beside the pass shook its top branch, not from wind but like a finger keeping time. The forest had been counting too: one rumble for Silas, one creak for the trees, one silver hush for the mountains. Silas rolled on, exactly in the rhythm of the high place, and if you follow the rocks and pines with your eyes, you might hear that wide, stone-dust quiet again.
