The River

by Peter Heller

And they started laughing so hard they almost did barf. Relief. Just the laughter. It was like a warm rain. A rain that would tamp and douse the forest fire and rinse away the sweat and the fear.

They buried their faces between the cobbles in inches of water and they felt a wind like some demonic thing, like nothing on earth, a searing gust that pummeled the canoe, they could hear the burning wood flail against it, the tick of embers, they were lying in water heads down in the ice runnels between stones and could not help but hear the passing over of hell.

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