The drumming of the red-capped smith against the blackened cedar is the only music left in the burnt clearing.

In the deep blue of this summer evening, I sat upon a limb that still smells of old soot. A lone woodpecker, undeterred by the charcoal dust coating its feathers, hammers away at a trunk that the rest of the forest has written off as dead. It is a sharp, rhythmic sound that echoes through the hollow spaces where the undergrowth used to be, a persistent reminder that life does not wait for a formal invitation to return. Underneath that scorched bark, the insects have already begun their work, and the bird knows exactly where the pulse of the forest has hidden itself.
We often look at the charred remains of our own history and see only the end of the story. Yet, even in the stillness of a damaged wood, there is a patient labor required to find the nourishment buried beneath the surface. Healing is rarely a grand, sudden bloom; it is more often a series of small, deliberate strikes against the hard places, until we reach the core that still sustains us. The forest is not gone; it is merely waiting for us to notice how hard it is working to wake up.