It was dawn, and the smell of last night’s campfire still hung in the air.
Daphne knew that smell well: It would permeate her clothes, her tent, even her car for the next few weeks, after she’d gone back home. Back to the daily mundanities of life: rush around, be responsible, interact with people she only knew at surface level. Hi, how are you, how’s the weather?
But for now, it was her and the campsite. Nobody to interrupt her moments of solitude. No humming electric lights, no speeding cars driving by too closely, no teenagers walking by with their cell phones blaring chaotic music.
Just her and the campsite. So much quiet.
She had found this alcove in the forest, a clearing that had probably been made by other humans looking for the same escape she had been: Just on the side of the lake, with a view of yet more forest everywhere she looked across the water.
The only evidence of other humans still existing were the electric lines that competed with the trees off to the east, and the occasional hum of an airplane overhead.
Otherwise, she was blissfully alone. Alone to be with herself, her thoughts, her own questions about herself, deep questions about who she was and how she fit into the world. Without the noise of the outside world bearing down so constantly upon her, she was free to talk to the most important person in her world.
So here she was, in the dawn, drinking bourbon out of a metal cup because there was nobody here to judge her for hating coffee. The bourbon warmed her just as well, although the August morning chill was slight and only temporary.
Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. A chipmunk skittered past her in a nearby tree. She pressed her free hand into the dirt and felt the connection to the earth.
Once, only a few centuries ago, most of the world was like this. But now human encroachment had paved so much of it away.
She closed her eyes and reminded herself to stop thinking about the outside world. What mattered was the now.
Be present in the now.
Her cup empty, she set it down and stood up, feeling the morning sun’s heat on her face, contrasting with the coolness of the dirt under her bare feet.
Doffing her t-shirt and panties, the only things she’d worn to sleep, she walked up to the water’s edge, one foot in the water, one foot on land, her body feeling the cool morning breeze around her.
She closed her eyes and stood there, holding tightly onto that one specific moment, being as present in it as she could. Not fighting the thoughts of the world outside, but meeting them and discarding them as they came.
Be present in the now. Be present with yourself, and nobody else.
There was no plot; there was no story; there was only herself, stripped naked to the world, stripped naked to herself, in this moment.
She stepped forward into the water, where she bathed and baptized herself under the rising sun.