A Quiet Witness
There was no path through the woodland at all — just a suggestion of direction, softened by rain. The wood was hushed — not silent, but thick with that kind of sound that only exists in the absence of human noise. Leaves whispered. Water flowed. I’d forgotten my water shoes, so I walked barefoot up the brook.
I hadn’t been chasing anything specific. Just light, maybe — that rare, cold light that breaks through clouds like a held breath. Or perhaps silence. Stillness. A moment I couldn’t quite name.
Then I heard the waterfall, not suddenly, but as though it had always been there, and I had only just tuned into its frequency. I followed the brook upstream, with trees and slick bracken on either side of me.
That’s when I saw it.
A fallen tree stretched across the stream — dark, sodden, and beautiful. Water churned beneath it, pale and frothing, while the fall itself tumbled behind like ghost-white curtains drawn over shadow. I set my tripod up in the water, placing my camera on top. I took my bag off my back and laid it on a large rock in the middle of the brook, turned back around — and there it was. A little robin.
Perched so perfectly on the moss-covered trunk, it looked almost unreal — as though it had stepped out of a dream or an old tale. Its breast glowed against the gloom, a vivid, defiant ember. It didn’t flinch as I stepped back behind the camera. It didn’t fly; it just watched, head tilted slightly, as if it too were curious about what I might capture. And possibly thinking to itself, Look at this idiot — barefoot and in his boxers, standing in a stream.
In that moment, something shifted in me.
I forgot about the settings on the camera, forgot about composition and light. I just breathed. The world had narrowed to this: one small bird on an ancient tree, the roar of water, and a sense of presence so complete it felt holy.
I pressed the shutter.
Click.
The sound was soft, respectful. A single note in a symphony of rushing water and whispering leaves.
I stayed there for a while after the robin had gone. It left quietly, without a fuss. But it left something behind. Not just in the frame of the photo, but in me. A kind of stillness. A sense that I’d been allowed to witness something both ordinary and extraordinary, just by paying attention.
I live for moments like this — fleeting, tender, and quietly powerful. A glimpse of the wild world as it truly is, when it doesn’t know you’re watching… or maybe when it does, and doesn’t mind.
A Quiet Witness–a poem inspired by my story
No path led through the wooded glade,
Just hints the rain and time had made.
The hush was deep, not fully still —
A breathless sound the trees would spill.
The leaves, they whispered, soft and low,
As distant waters pulsed their flow.
Barefoot, I walked the brook’s cold bed,
With moss and mist around me spread.
No goal I chased, no prize in sight —
Perhaps the gleam of silver light,
That breaks through clouds with breath held tight,
Or silence dressed in morning white.
Then faintly — not abrupt, but near —
A waterfall I came to hear.
It called as if it’d always been,
Awaiting me to tune it in.
The bracken bowed, the beech trees swayed,
The brook climbed higher as I wade.
And then I saw — across the stream,
A log, like something from a dream.
Dark, waterlogged, a velvet shroud,
With foaming waves, that laughed aloud.
Behind it, veils of tumbling white
Fell ghostlike in the filtered light.
I placed my tripod in the stream,
Still half adrift within a dream.
Then set my bag upon a stone,
And turned — and found I was not alone.
A robin, on the trunk I saw, its breast a flame —
Its gaze so keen, a flicker lit in woodland green.
It seemed unreal, a tale retold,
A spark of myth with feathers bold.
It watched me calmly, head askew,
As if to say, “What’s wrong with you?”
Perhaps it thought, “This human fool,
Barefoot and cold, a walking tool!”
But something shifted in that space,
A stillness held in time and place.
I lost all thought of frame and light,
And simply breathed — the moment right.
Then softly, as the shutter clicked,
A note was played, both clear and strict.
A reverent sound, both small and grand,
Like touching grace with a trembling hand.
The robin left without a sound,
Its wings a whisper all around.
Yet what it left I can’t unsee —
A quiet held inside of me.
Not just the frame, not just the shot,
But something deeper, I had caught.
A truth the wild is slow to show:
Its grace is found
In letting go.