Early morning. The bunk at the bow of the boat is warm and cozy, as long as she doesn’t touch the inner wall of the hull. Her sleepy eyes refuse to open. Her tired brain tries to stay in the land of dreams. Unwillingly, she sighs, admitting the loud stranger of awakeness.
It tangles her legs in the sleeping bag and fills her bladder to bursting point. Groaning, she scissors-kicks her legs out of the bag and over the side of the bunk. She stumbles her way to the head (toilet), jars her knee on the handle of the pump, and plomps down on the wiggling toilet seat. What she wouldn’t give for a proper self-flushing toilet.
She hears her sister stomping about on deck, lowering the kayak and pushing off for her morning paddle.
After putting on some water to boil, she returns to the forward cabin and slips on numerous layers of clothes. The inner layer is newly laundered; the outer is from yesterday and does not smell so fresh. She heads back to the galley and makes herself a cup of tea. It’s a large cup, purchased at a local artisan fair from a potter who obviously embodies the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi.
Teetering up the steep ladder into the cockpit, the full teacup miraculously doesn’t spill. She looks out at the water, its mist blurring the details of the shoreline but not the sounds of birdlife and birdsong all around. This is the perfect moment of the day: alone, except for her sister in the kayak farther away, the water, and some still unclear ideas about how they might fill the day.
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