Beneath the high, ribbed sky where mountain light shivers like silver on glass, the aspen stands in its cathedral of trunks — a congregation of pale, trembling candles. Each tree is a voice in a choir: paper-thin bark peeled in places to show inner warmth, leaves like coins catching the wind in quick, bright applause. Yet among these white pillars, one throat of bark splits — a seam that runs like a fevered map down the trunk — and the forest leans in to listen.
Beneath the high, ribbed sky where mountain light shivers like silver on glass, the aspen stands in its cathedral of trunks — a congregation of pale, trembling candles. Each tree is a voice in a choir: paper-thin bark peeled in places to show inner warmth, leaves like coins catching the wind in quick, bright applause. Yet among these white pillars, one throat of bark splits — a seam that runs like a fevered map down the trunk — and the forest leans in to listen.