It happened without announcement. rswfire looked outside — the ordinary act of checking, of tracking what was there — and registered an absence where a camper had been. Not one departure but all of them. The campground at Siltcoos had emptied out over the course of a Sunday and he had not noticed it happening. He was the only one left back here. He said so out loud, twice, in the way a person confirms a thing to himself before he trusts it: there's literally nobody, everybody's gone, it's just me.
The heat had been the day's dominant condition. It had been hot all day, and now it wasn't — the drop registered on his body first, then in words. Very nice out. The air had turned comfortable in the way coastal evenings turn, the sun's weight lifting off the site and leaving something cooler behind. He picked up the camera and began recording, holding the emptied ground and the water in the same frame.
He named what he was feeling directly, without hedging around it. This is just what I need. And then, extending past the moment into a wider claim about how he'd prefer to live: I wish I was like this all the time. But he caught the statement mid-air and bracketed it before it could be misread. Of course everybody should get out. He was not complaining. He was not criticizing. He searched for the word and lost it, and lost his shoe in the same beat, and kept going anyway. It's just nice. It's nice to be by yourself.
Underneath the preference sat the practical shape of it, stated plainly and then left standing: he needed to find ways of doing this that don't have to pay for. The solitude was available to him here, on this site, tonight, because he had access to this site. That access has a cost. He said it once and moved on, not dwelling, not solving — just placing the constraint next to the thing he wanted so both were visible in the same frame.
Then the water. A boat had stopped near the shore — at least he's on the water right there — and he turned the camera toward it. A second boat came through behind it and didn't stop, just zoomed by, cutting the surface and continuing on out of frame. Two vessels, two modes: one anchored in place, one passing through. He watched both.
The boat that stopped set something loose. He wondered whether he'd like being on one. He didn't know — not from memory, not from recent experience. It had been a long time. He reached back for the last instance and located it by school grade: eighth grade. That was the measure available to him, and he offered it without elaboration.
The recording ran just under three minutes, most of it silence. Between the spoken passages there was the water, the cooling air, the site holding nobody but him. He turned the camera outward one more time and addressed whoever would watch it later. So nice out to share with you. Hope you guys have a nice Sunday.