Thoughts from a back-woods bench. Drawing, music and words by Nate Richardson/The Littoralist.

The river, caught in the late autumn sun, slowed and nearly stopped.

Eventually his mind slowed too, becoming a part of that river bend.

It could have been a minute, a year or a hundred years that passed while sitting there... there was no time.

He was alone but they were all there too; the trappers, loggers, homesteaders, the bench builder, and all the souls who had sought peace along that stretch.