The River

by Peter Heller

There’s always relief in committing to a decision, even when there’s no choice.

But every river story they had ever read was just beneath the surface of their imaginations and must have fired them with extra energy and braced them, too, because at least half of those stories did not have happy endings.

the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

if wolves sang, and coyotes, and elk and birds, and wind, and we, too, it was probably in response to a music we didn’t know we could hear.