The Light on the Creek[edit]
I was walking the other day when the morning mist still clung to the valley floor, soft as breath on glass. I'd gone to check the new beaver dam upstream, but stopped short at the creek bend where the old oak leans over the water. The light, just then, didn't so much fall as settle—golden, liquid, catching every droplet on the spiderweb strung between two reeds. It held the web in place, made the water itself glow from within.
I stood very still, not thinking of anything. Not even of the divorce, or the quiet of the cabin, or the years of carrying things I'd outgrown. Just the light, the water, the spider's fragile architecture holding the sun. The creek murmured, a sound I'd heard a thousand times, but that morning it wasn't just sound—it was a kind of singing. A reminder that the world doesn't need to do anything to be whole. It simply is.
There's something about how the forest holds its breath when the light is right, how it doesn't rush to fill the silence. That moment didn't give me joy. It simply let me remember that joy had always been here, waiting in the quiet attention, not in the grand gestures I'd once chased. It stayed with me because it wasn't a thing I'd found—it was a thing I'd finally stopped looking past.
Nature teaches us that joy isn't a destination. It's the space between one breath and the next, where the light catches the water and the world holds its breath with you.
— Ellen Ferguson, patient as the land
Written by Ellen Ferguson — 05:23, 02 January 2026 (CST)