At three in the afternoon rswfire is crouched over wet wood, trying to get a fire to take. The wood has to dry before it will burn, so the whole operation is smoke — thick, mobile smoke that follows him every time he shifts position, until he gives up and moves to the other side of the ring. Across the street a Ranger works on one of the yurts. Golf carts circulate through the loop, zooming past in the middle distance, and rswfire watches them with open delight, saying he wants the armored one. The day behind him has been full: two hikes bracketing the work, a couple of yurts cleaned, a site cleared with a coworker where campers had left an absolute mess. Not the deep-cleaning yurt, though. That one is still waiting, and the crew is getting stressed about it. He is direct on camera about where he stands — he is not the deep cleaner here, that is not the role anyone wants him doing.
The night before, he had gone out to the lake around ten or eleven and taken Adam with him — the drunk man, whose name he now knows. Adam had been drinking, but was more sober than before, and more respectful, and rswfire describes actually having a decent time getting to know him. Adam has spent his working life around docks and fishing. They exchanged numbers. Adam said he might be back next week, and rswfire allows that there might be a budding friendship there, and leaves it at that. His mother has sent him her phone; tracking says Wednesday. The one he's holding is busted.
At ten at night he stands on the pier in fog. A nearly full moon is behind it, bright enough that he can see well even with everything covered. The fog is denser above him, massing the distant trees out of existence, and thinner at ground level where he stands, and he tries twice to describe what this does to the scene before conceding it is impossible to describe and impossible to get on camera. Ducks move across the water — a family going one way, and then solitary ducks out on the surface, calling to each other in the dark. He calls it an incredible moment. What he finally arrives at, standing in the middle of it, is that everything is just one thing.
Elsewhere in the day, at a split in the road, two kids pass him — one on a bike, one on the board with a stick to hold. One says I'm this way. The other says what. I'm this way. Okay. And they go their separate directions, a brief friendship that found itself, played for a minute, and dissolved back into separate domains. rswfire says he thinks that is so cool.
There is one route he plans around. The man who had centered his sexuality — who implied rswfire wanted to have sex with him when rswfire didn't know him and, by his account, was only trying to help him with his tent — is still in the campground, and had come by rswfire's camper while he was out hiking, looking for him. rswfire drives past the site because the loop is the only way out. His position is stated plainly and without heat: he doesn't like that kind of interaction, the man needs to own his own feelings rather than making everything about rswfire, and so today will involve avoiding him while the chaos chariot is out and work is happening in the park. He notes that this is a preview of the dynamics he expects to face everywhere he volunteers, and then decides to embrace the chaos and raise the moment.
The rest is logistics and ritual. A supply run into Lakeside for groceries, pop, shampoo and body wash — both ran out the same day. A name tag has appeared with his name on it, source unknown, and he has already replaced the given text: it now reads chaos entity, and he plans to rotate it — sovereign being, sovereign force, different things at different times. Milk biscuits from the Dollar Store have been going to dogs all day, one of them arriving mid-recording for its share, and he remarks with some amusement that the owners trust him to do it at all. He intends to start carrying rubber ducks in his pocket for the Jeeps, a thing he has done forever but never portably, and he liked the suggestion of tiny dinosaurs for kids. Eight hours, not the four it felt like. He is exhausted, and he says it feels like a transitional stage — a rhythm forming in a place he leaves in two weeks. He will take the rituals with him. The milk biscuits, and his general chaotic nature.
The hard edge comes at the end, by the fire, with the smoke. Upwork is the only mechanism he can name for sustaining this life, so it has to be done, it is an absolute necessity — and he says his whole being is saying no. He describes it as resistance on a level he has never experienced, and says he cannot fully explain it. What he can name is the pattern: every time he has gone back to a freelancing platform it has turned long-term, draining, intense, all-consuming. He states he is not the same person who did that before, that it did not feel this way at the time and it does now, and that he is not willing to invest his whole self in something he does not think has any true value. There must be another way, he says, without naming one. Then he names what does have value, and lets it stand as the last word: handing out milk biscuits.