Anthony's Literary Lens

Tag: forest

  • A Wisp of Frozen Breath

    A Wisp of Frozen Breath

    Pack moves as one shadow.
    Scents write stories in the air.
    Silence howls through teeth.

    Wolf
    What’s for lunch?

    The air bites my nostrils, sharp and clean—a thousand stories carved into ice crystals. I taste the forest before I see it: the musk of a sleeping vole three paw-lengths beneath the snow, the sour tang of last week’s elk carcass rotting under a spruce, the sharp warning of a rival pack’s urine marking the eastern ridge. My world is written in scent, each breath a page turned. 

    Snow crunches beneath my paws, a rhythm syncopated with the others. My pack moves as one shadow, our breath pluming silver in the twilight. The moon is a pale smudge behind clouds, but I do not need it. My eyes drink the dark, painting the forest in strokes of indigo and charcoal. The trees are skeletal sentries, their branches clawing at a sky heavy with silence. To you, this would be blindness. To me, it is clarity. 

    A whine ripples through the pack—”Young One”, restless, her paws too loud. “Mother” answers with a low chuff, a sound that vibrates in my ribs. We do not waste words. Our voices are layered: the flick of an ear, the tilt of a muzzle, the cadence of our howls that stitch the horizon together. When we sing, the mountains sing back. Distance means nothing. 

    Then—”there”. 

    A thread of warmth unspools in the cold. Musk. Salt. Fear. It floods my sinuses, vivid as a scream. My mouth waters; my muscles coil. The scent is a map: “hind leg favoring the left… young moose, separated… half a mile north, where the pines thicken”. The pack feels it too. Shoulders tense. Tails lift, quivering. 

    “Now”, says the wind. “Now”. 

    We move like smoke. Snow muffles our steps, but the prey’s heartbeat thunders in my skull. My vision narrows to nothing but the chase. The forest blurs into streaks of shadow and movement. I taste the moose’s panic now, sour and bright, a spark against the cold. The pack fans out, a crescent moon of teeth and intent. 

    “Closer.” 

    The world shrinks to the heat of running blood, the sound of crunching snow, the electric tang of “almost”. My legs are fire. My pulse is a drum. 

    And then— 

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  • Stag in Sunlight

    Stag in Sunlight

    Sunlight spills like breath,
    ancient trees hold quiet watch,
    stag stands, still as stone.

    A stag in sunlight standing in the woods

    In the quiet hush of morning, a single stag stands alone in a secluded forest clearing, his figure outlined in gentle streams of light that filter down from the canopy above. Each ray seeps through the branches and leaves, softening as it falls, wrapping him in a halo that seems both eternal and fleeting. His antlers, branches of bone and time, reach into the air with a majestic calmness, each point a marker of seasons come and gone, each curve a silent record of survival and adaptation. His coat is rich, a mix of earth-browns and shadows, blending into the woods yet catching the light just enough to stand apart, to be noticed.

    This moment—the stag, the sunlight, the stillness—is a scene millions of years in the making, a perfect portrait painted by evolution’s quiet hand. From the simplest of life forms, driven by the need to survive, to the elegance of this creature, whose every feature has been shaped by time itself, life has woven something wondrous. The stag’s heightened senses, his graceful frame, even the natural lines of his form, all serve a purpose, yet they come together to create something beyond mere function. They become beauty. And beauty, too, has its place in evolution, for it draws us near, inspires us to protect, to connect, to pause and simply be present.

    We, too, are shaped by evolution’s design, moulded not only to see but to feel, to wonder, and to appreciate. Perhaps, in a way, our perception of beauty is a survival instinct itself—a way to recognize harmony, to find peace in nature’s rhythms, to feel at home in the world that bore us. Standing in the clearing, we understand our role in this continuum. This moment of quiet awe is a part of something larger—a shared heritage with this stag, this forest, this light. In that silent connection, beauty becomes a bridge across time, binding us to all that has come before and all that will follow.

    And so we stand, quietly watching, breathing, and being, as the stag lifts his head, his gaze piercing yet soft, both knowing and unknowing. In this clearing, we glimpse the rare gift that evolution has left us: the capacity to see beauty not only in what we need but in all that simply is.

    What scene takes your breath away?

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