The first breath burns.
Cold air tears through my nose and settles deep in my lungs—sharp enough that I can almost feel my tissue crack. Dawn hasn’t peered over the skyline yet but I’m already moving through the timber. My boots whisper over a hard layer of frost that coats everything, like spilled sugar.
The rifle-strap digs into my shoulder with every careful step, with familiar pressure and weight. I keep my fingers wrapped around the wooden stock; not because I need to, but because the warmth from my palm makes me feel anchored. Otherwise the silence might swallow me whole.
There’s an ache in my chest that isn’t from the cold. A tightness I haven’t shaken since July. Since the earth swallowed my father and kept spinning like nothing had gone missing. He taught me to walk this trail. He taught me how to breathe in the woods, like you’re afraid of disturbing the trees. He taught me how to shoot.
“With respect,” he said. “If you don’t respect the animal, you don’t deserve to touch the rifle.” I hear his voice in the sway of bare branches. It makes me swallow hard. A branch snaps ahead.
Not loud—delicate. In the stillness of morning, it’s everything to cause heed. My heart kicks up and thuds against my ribs. Instinct pulls me forward, a past a rotting log dusted with with falling snow, its mossy back reveals where my coat brushes it. Then another step. Closer.
I lower myself to my knees, my jeans sopping where they hit the frost. My breath drifts in front of my face, a white ghost rising towards the dark sky. The smell of pine hangs heavy in the air, a resinous sweetness sticky in my airway. I close my eyes for a moment and let the woods speak. What my father did. “Listen to your skin,” he’d whisper. “Your ears will lie. Your skin never does.” And he was right.
The sensation hits near my jaw first—an electric hum in the air, a subtle switch in stillness when something living takes a step into the open.
I open my eyes.
There he is.
A young buck, maybe three seasons old, stepping out from behind a tangle of pines. The gray morning light dusts over his coat, turning it silver in places and warm brown in others. Snow clings to the curve of his back, almost making him glow. His breath puffs from his nose in slow heavy clouds.
My throat tightens.
He’s beautiful.
He lifts his head, ears perk, eyes deep and black and impossibly calm. He doesn’t see me— at least not yet. But animals like him always know the forest is paying attention. I ease the rifle off my shoulder, moving the way my father did. Fluid, patient, respectful. My glove glides quickly against the metal. The buck’s ears flick. He turns slightly, giving me a clean angle behind the shoulder. A perfect shot.
My heartbeat rolls up my throat, and I steady my breath the way I’ve done a hundred times. Inhale… hold… exhale… halfway…
My finger trembles on the trigger— not from cold but from something heavier. The forest is silent except for the tiny trickle of ice melting under the few first hints of sunrise. The cold bites at the tip of my nose and numbs my fingers. But yet my palm still sweats against the stock. I should shoot; that’s the job. That’s what dad would do. The problem is: I don’t feel ready. Something inside me rattles like loose screws.
The buck lowers his head, pawing gently at the glossy snow with one of his dark hooves. Steam rolls from his button nose and drifts upwards, twisting in the air. Suddenly I’m eleven again, kneeling beside my father in the same patch of woods. The snow was deeper then and my mittens were soaked. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering because I hated the cold. Dad kept smiling and in a way it made the shivering worth it. “Today you’ll take your first deer. You’ll know what it feels like to be a part of the forest.” He never pushed me. Not then and not ever. He just had a warm hand behind my neck and assured me, “You’ll know when you’re ready.” But he never got to see if I did.
A sting builds behind my scleras, sharp as the icy wind. I force myself to blink it away. The bucks shifts again and lifts its head toward the deeper woods as if sensing a change in the air. If I don’t take the shot now he’ll be gone.
My finger curls slowly around the trigger but an off feeling clings to my ribs. My breath cracks in the wind as I exhale. The world narrows to the thin line of sight, the soft fur just behind his shoulder and the white flakes resting on them. Still my dad’s words in the back of my head.
“Respect, always.” I respect animals. I respect the woods. But right now I don’t respect myself enough to pretend I’m steady, or that shooting him would be anything but an attempt to fill the broad hole in my chest. I came here to feel closer to my father, but all I’ve done is press my grief into the shape of a rifle.
He peers up, catching me in his sight. My heart claps painfully against my chest. It’s not fear, it’s something coarse. Like he’s looking through me, through the grief I’m wearing like a second coat. He doesn’t run, nor does he flinch. Instead, he watches me with calmness that makes my hands go steady. Slowly, I lower the rifle.
The buck blinks and his ears flicker with a small nod of his head. Then he turns, steps lightly into a bush and disappears as silently as he came. The quiet that follows is vast. It thunders in my skull and radiates to the tightness in my upper body. I let out a breath; swiftly, my knees fall weak. I drop on the log behind me, the shivering moss saturating my jeans.
My hands are shaking but it’s not with regret but release. The cedar lines around me soften, as if they’re counting their breath with me. The frost glitters under the glowing light and I see a squirrel burrow into a hole in a nearby tree. I press my palms to my face and feel the warmth of my breath rebound against my skin. I didn’t fail. I didn’t freeze. I didn’t dishonor my dad. I just listened for the first time in months.
My father hunted because he loved the woods. He loved the work, mainly the balance of it all. He never hunted to fill emptiness—he hunted to be part of something larger than himself. I came here trying to chase his ghost, to feel close to him by stepping in his footprints. But he wouldn’t have asked that of me. He’d want me to follow my own trail, even if that meant lowering the rifle.
The aches in my chest fade but it seems a bruise is left. The sun finally pushes over the ridge, spilling warm light across the forest and frosted ground. It stretches through the branches, reaching as far as it possibly can.
I stand slowly. The world feels heavier without the tension of the shot interlinked inside me, in a good way, a grounded way. I sling the rifle right back over my shoulder, the strap digging in the same spot as before. The weight feels different now. Like it’s not a burden but a tool. The woods smell vivid now—pine, earth thawing, distant streams of water.
I begin walking back towards the trail. Each step crutches through the sleet beneath me and I let the sound carry me. Somewhere far behind me the buck is moving deeper in the timber. Maybe he’ll make it through winter—maybe he won’t. The forest has its own rules, but today he lives. The world is waking and my grief still lingers but it’s no longer choking me. It’s by my side. A companion rather than a shadow.
When I reach the edge of the clearing where my truck rests, I stop once more and look back into the deepness of the woods. The trees stand tall and still with their branches drenched in sunlight. The wind stirs, brushing my cheek with a cold touch that feels impossibly like a hand. I smile small and soft, then turn back towards my truck, towards home, towards the things beyond these trees.
