On the last morning, rswfire walked the site with the camera running, saying goodbye to it out loud. Camp was already partly struck. He stated that he had gone through withdrawal here, that it was over, that he felt better — and then, almost in the same breath, revised his standing read on the place. It hadn't been his favorite lake. But he said the place might warrant another chance, because who knows how he feels about it now. The assessment he had been carrying belonged to the interval, and the interval had closed.
He offered the evidence for the revision as he walked. There had been a boat one night, lights strung along both sides of it, young people cruising back and forth across the water while he sat with a campfire going. He hadn't taken video of it. He said so plainly — he should have shown them, and he didn't — and the missing footage stood in the record alongside the footage he was making.
Then the lake itself pulled his attention. The water had gone muddy from the weather. Ducks were out on it, and something larger he couldn't name, a bird he had seen flying around the area over the past days. He tracked it briefly, let it go unidentified, and came back to the ducks — they were cute, they were awesome, they were so cute together like that. And then the tree. He had shown that tree before. He read the waterline against it and the reading landed: the tree was normally above water. It really did flood here. He said it twice, the second time with the correction folded in — he hadn't realized, and he was standing close to it now.
The mud was the operative condition. Not a verdict on the lake, not a reason for the departure, just saturated ground making every outdoor task of breaking camp harder. He said everything you have to do outside sucks. He also lost the words for it mid-sentence — reached for what he was trying to say about cleaning up camp, didn't find it, and named the not-finding directly rather than editing around it. Why can't I come up with the right words for this. Then he restated it in the plainest available form and moved on.
He was almost done. The next place was ahead of him and he said he was excited about it, taking it easy about the last of the work. The interval here had a beginning, a shape, and now an end he could mark out loud — the withdrawal, the boat with its lights, the flood, the tree he had already introduced to the record, the ducks. He logged the site as it actually stood on the way out, revised open, and then he would be on his way.