Currents and Eddies

2020 Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest Runner-up

I didn’t understand rivers any better than I understood myself in those days. Those fire-and-water days lay bare and confused under the eternal shadow of giant redwood trees. I was nineteen and stationed at a fire camp in the middle of trees so tall and a forest so thick that my senses often grew overwhelmed. I no longer recall how many of us lived there together, loud with youth, but I do recall how, within that belly of soft, wet moss, we ripened into a single-stemmed unit.