Sublime

Just as day is joined to night, so does the year have its seams.’

She would like to believe there will be a place, again, where the streetlights end and wilderness begins. The wolf border. And if this is where it has to begin in England, she thinks, this rich, disqualifying plot, with its private sponsorship and antiquated hierarchy, so be it. The ends justify the means.

Soon the pack will be gone, too – north, after the caribou – the centre will close for winter, and she is flying home to England. Her first visit in six years.

And though the snow smothered the valley and the milk froze in the dairy, my soul thawed.