In Short – Issue 4 (Winter 2026)

January 31, 2026

Image credit: Kara E Riggleman

Nova, not Incognita

By Lindsey Pharr

“Is it much further to the falls?” the tourist asks, as we pass on the trail. I blink at him. He doesn’t know before. Before Helene rewrote the place I went to when I needed to right myself. For him, this is terra nova, not incognita. Maybe I can do it too. See this old place new. Maybe I can do the same with my own ruptured ground. Maybe the new shapes of us, these old mountains and me, can fit back together, spine to heart. As close as the cleft in a storm-split stone.

Lindsey Pharr writes from a little cabin in the woods outside of Asheville, NC. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from the Naslund-Mann School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Brevity, SmokeLong Quarterly, River Teeth's Beautiful Things, and elsewhere. For more, please visit her website at www.lindsey-pharr.com