Richard woke before the alarm, the room still cloaked in the bruised light of a Montreal November. Outside, a thin skin of ice glazed the windowpane; inside, the radiator clanked like an old friend clearing its throat. He lay there a moment, listening to the city stir—tires hissing on wet pavement, the muffled chime of a church bell from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. The book from the metro sat on the nightstand, its cracked spine catching the first grey shaft of dawn. He hadn't opened it again. Not yet. But he hadn't left it on the train either.
He rose, padded to the kitchen, and set the kettle. The apartment was small, efficient, the kind of place a mid-level analyst rents when he's stopped noticing the view. A single maple leaf—pressed flat between glass years ago—hung above the stove, the only decoration he'd bothered to keep from university. The kettle clicked off. Steam curled upward, fogging the window. Richard wiped a circle clear with his sleeve and looked down twelve storeys to the street. A woman in a red coat wrestled a stroller over the curb; a delivery cyclist coasted past, breath pluming white. Ordinary. Safe. His.
He drank his coffee black, no sugar, the way his father had taught him on fishing trips to the Gaspé—"sweetness is for city people who've forgotten the taste of real cold." The memory arrived uninvited, sharp as the wind off the Baie des Chaleurs. He set the mug down harder than necessary.
At the office, the day unfolded in its predictable geometry: spreadsheets, Slack pings, a stand-up where everyone nodded politely while staring at their shoes. Richard's manager, Claire, praised his Q3 projections—"Solid as ever, eh?"—and he smiled the small, closed-mouth smile that had become reflex. Inside, the book's map rustled like dry leaves against his ribs. Find your own summit. Liam's handwriting, or someone's. It didn't matter.
Lunch was a roasted beet salad from the cafeteria, eaten at his desk because the alternative was small talk by the microwaves. He opened a private browser tab, typed "hiking trails near Montreal," then closed it. Too soon. Too public. Instead he searched "mindfulness podcast Canada" and downloaded an episode by a woman from Halifax whose voice sounded like flannel and woodsmoke. He slipped in one earbud, volume low enough that no one would notice.
The host spoke of "micro-moments of choice." Richard snorted softly—corporate jargon wearing flannel—but kept listening. She described pausing at a crosswalk, noticing the cold bite of air on cheeks, the smell of snow coming. Choosing to feel it instead of scrolling. He tried it on the walk to the metro that evening. Stopped at Sherbrooke and Bleury, let the wind slap him awake. A teenager bumped his shoulder, muttered "sorry" without breaking stride. Richard inhaled diesel and chestnuts from a street vendor. The city smelled alive, almost edible. He felt foolish, then lighter.
At home he changed into track pants and runners older than his niece. The plan was a loop around the block—twenty minutes, nothing heroic. But the sidewalk was slick, the streetlights haloed in frost, and something in him refused to turn back at the corner. He kept going, past the dépanneur with its neon Labatt sign, past the church where old men played cards on folding tables. His breath came in steady clouds. The podcast lady had said, "Start where you are, with what you have." He had legs. He had lungs. He had a city that suddenly refused to stay flat.
He ended up on the mountain—Mount Royal, the city's green heart wearing its winter coat. The path was lit by lamps the colour of weak tea. Snow crunched underfoot. Halfway up, he stopped at the belvedere. Montreal spread below him like circuitry, red and gold arteries pulsing. He thought of Liam again, arms wide on that Jasper ridge, laughing at gravity. Richard lifted his own arms, tentative, then let them drop. Too theatrical. But the impulse had been real.
Back in the apartment, cheeks stinging, he poured water and opened the book for the first time since the train. It wasn't a biography or self-help tract but a slim collection of trail journals—hikers, climbers, a canoeist who'd paddled the Nahanni alone. One entry, dog-eared, read:
Day 14. Rain all night. Thought about quitting. Ate cold oatmeal and kept walking. The river doesn't care about my mood. Neither should I.
Richard laughed out loud, surprising himself. He fetched a notebook from the junk drawer—plain, blue, the kind accountants use for expense reports—and wrote the line down. Then, underneath:
Day 1. Walked the mountain. Didn't quit.
He underlined it twice.
The next morning he woke without the alarm again. This time he laced his shoes before coffee. The routine felt less like rebellion and more like negotiation: I'll give you twenty minutes if you give me clarity. The streets were quieter at six-thirty; only delivery trucks and the occasional jogger in reflective gear. He passed a Tim Hortons, smelled yeast and bacon, kept moving. At the mountain's base he paused, stretched against a railing still cold from the night. A woman with a golden retriever nodded good morning. He nodded back, the exchange brief but genuine.
Up the switchback trail, lungs burning politely, he noticed details he'd never catalogued: the way frost feathered the pine needles, how the city's hum softened with altitude. Near the top he found a bench dusted with snow and sat. From his pocket he pulled the blue notebook and a stub of pencil. He wrote:
Cold hurts in a good way. Reminder: still here.
He tore the page out, folded it small, and tucked it into the book beside the river journal. A private conversation between strangers.
That evening he skipped the usual scroll through hockey highlights. Instead he brewed tea—peppermint from a tin his sister had sent from PEI—and opened a blank spreadsheet. Not for work. Columns: Sleep, Movement, Silence, Connection. Rows: the next seven days. He typed modest targets—7 hours, 45 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 real conversation—and hit save. The screen glowed like a modest campfire.
Friday brought sleet that turned to rain by noon. Claire asked if he'd lead the Monday presentation. He heard himself say, "Happy to support, but I've got a conflict—can Raj take point?" The words arrived fully formed, polite but firm. Claire blinked, recovered with a smile. "Sure, no problem." Richard felt the small click of a door opening.
After work he ducked into a café on Monkland, ordered a London fog, and claimed a corner table. The barista, a student with a maple leaf pin on her apron, hummed along to Stan Rogers on the sound system. Richard opened the notebook. He wrote for twenty minutes without censoring: memories of Liam teaching him to read contour lines on a topo map, the smell of spruce smoke, the first time he'd slept under open sky and woken to moose breath fogging the tent nylon. When he looked up, the café had filled with the after-work crowd, voices overlapping like overlapping waves. He closed the book, paid, and stepped into the wet night feeling strangely buoyant.
Saturday he drove to the Laurentians, an impulse disguised as errands. The highway north was a grey ribbon flanked by bare sugar maples. He stopped at a dépanneur for coffee and a butter tart, then kept going until pavement gave way to packed snow and the sign for Parc national du Mont-Tremblant. He paid the day fee, laced up, and followed a groomed trail marked easy. Easy was relative; his calves protested within ten minutes. But the air tasted of iron and resin, and the only sounds were his breathing and the squeak of boots on snow.
Halfway around the loop he met an older couple on snowshoes. The man wore a toque with a pompom the size of a tennis ball. "First time this season?" he asked. Richard admitted it was. The woman smiled. "You'll be back. The mountain's addictive." They continued on, poles clicking. Richard watched them go, envied the easy rhythm of their partnership.
He found a fallen log, brushed off snow, and sat. From his pack he pulled an apple and the blue notebook. He wrote:
They moved like they'd done this forever. I want that—not the snowshoes, the certainty.
Sunday he slept late, the luxury of no alarm. When he woke, sunlight poured through the blinds in hard white bars. He made pancakes—real ones, not from a mix—ate them with maple syrup from a farm near Quebec City. Then he cleaned the apartment with the radio on, CBC classical, windows cracked to let in the cold. The act felt ceremonial, like preparing a canoe for spring launch.
That night he texted his sister in Calgary: Coffee soon? She replied instantly with a string of maple leaf emojis and a voice note: "About time, big brother." He played it twice, smiling at the familiar tease in her voice.
Before bed he stood at the window. Snow had started again, fat flakes drifting past the streetlight. The city looked softer, almost forgiving. He opened the notebook to a fresh page and wrote a single line:
Small steps, northern light.
He underlined it once, gently, then closed the book and set it beside the pressed maple leaf. The radiator clanked its approval. Somewhere in the walls, pipes carried heat to strangers. Richard turned off the lamp and listened to the snow fall against the glass, steady as a heartbeat.
The glimmer was no longer faint. It had a pulse.