Jonathan Schlosser

I woke up in a tent and my brother was snoring and so I got up and went outside. It was six thirty and the whole camp was quiet. I sat near the fire pit and read Hemingway; stories of Africa and other places and the people of those places. People started to wake up around me. The man in the next camp got up before his family and made a fire and I could hear it burning. After a time, my family also woke and we made our own fire and cooked over it bacon and eggs and toast and sausage and coffee. We then went to the beach and swam and the water was so cold that it hurt your feet but after six games of volleyball with those we met at the beach you desired the numbness because you were sweating and your feet hurt from the constant pushing against the sand that is never as solid and even as it looks in photographs. We stood and laughed in the water and then got out to play again, diving and calling to one another and pushing our bodies in a way not found often in the city. After that we hiked through the forest along the top of a ridge covered in cedars for an hour and came out at a channel and my brothers and sisters and I swam across it to an island and then from that island to another one farther out and we could not see anyone but ourselves.