so it's storming out on the lake, little waves our bodies break

I woke up early this morning, before anyone else was up. The ashes of last night's fire were still warm enough to start pine needles and twigs, so I set the coffee on and slipped off down the creek for some dawn alone time. Taking the right hand turn out of the site, my favorite site, there's a little cut in the side of the White Oak creek and you can follow it up to a good log jam and trout hole, a place where I've drank champagne with my mom and watched ruby-throat hummingbirds feed on cardinal flowers last June. A secret, perfect place. This morning, there were no hummingbirds, but the little mountain ephemeral flowers were up as bright spots of color on the ground. I saw birdfoot violets, yellow and white, and silvery blood root blooms and their weird pawprint leaves unfolding in the weak sun. The hemlock needles had that kind of misty, smoky look to them that they get some times when the light is either coming or going.

I felt alone in the best, best way, although I wasn't, really, since Sven had gotten up with me. I let him sleep with me last night, something I don't usually allow, but he'd been so tired and sweet, and he'd gotten into my sleeping bag before I realized what he was up to. This morning, though, he was all business, since supervising any extracurricular camping excursions is something he takes extremely seriously. The Girl is going off by herself again and he'd better come along because who knows what kind of trouble she might get into without him along to chaperone, and also what if there is something to climb or bark at or smell or race around about?

I hadn't forgotten it was Easter Sunday, this being the first one I have spent away from my family, not going to church, not having any fucking ham, (although later in the morning I would cook farm sausages, along with eggs with ramps and shallots over the fire.) I wondered about if my mom and my brother were arguing about where they'd be going to church. I thought about my grandfather, whose fatigues I was wearing. His death feels so strange, like a hole I keep worrying at, forgetting it's there and then returning again to check on how it feels. I thought about my friend. When I am comfortably in solitude, I am sometimes my best self, or maybe my most authentic.

I could have kept the quiet for a long time, but there were things to be done, even just in the tiny microcosm of the wilderness, with my phone 30 minutes from relevant and my tools limited to elements: fire and water. Sven got antsy, anxious to get back to camp, to his boy, and Travis, whom he adores. He doesn't like people to be separated, this dog of mine, and nothing makes him more content than when everyone is just in their same good place, all together. As we walked back to camp, he grabbed one of the pieces of wood I was carrying and pranced ahead with it, as if the whole thing had been his idea.