Final Morning

We unzipped our tents and emerged into a dark murmuring cloud of morning fresh, rain-exaggerated, mosquitoes. Small smears of some other animals blood, perhaps our own or upstream puking partyers, began to appear on our foreheads and arms.

The whisper of the camp stove couldn't rival the hum of the cloak of mosquitoes we wore. As if they knew we were leaving they dined on us as we had dined on the beauty of the river. And we dripped from their chins.

The reality that it was our last morning on the river settled over camp.

There was a lot of silence this morning. No crack and crunch of a morning Coors echoed through the corridors, no spark or poof and smoke of a morning cigarette, only the wheeze and sighs of lungs barely capable of words.