A Simple Morning (today's Sunday Scribblings)

I roll over. Maybe it’s the birds. A whippoorwill has been whistling on and off all night, disturbing my sleep. It’s still a good hour or more before sunrise, but the stars are gone and there’s enough light for me to see by without using a flashlight. I reach over to where my stove is sitting. It’s pumped and primed from the evening before. I open the valve for just a second, releasing a little gasoline around the burner. Striking the sparker, a bright orange flame explodes. I let it burn, heating the gas generator. After 30 seconds or so, as the flame burns down, I turn on the gas and the flame becomes dark blue. The stove roars. Other hikers have joked that it sounds like a shuttle launch, but this morning I’m alone. The stove drowns the chirping of the birds and the ripple of the river. I sit a pot of water on top and unzip my sleeping bag, pulling on shorts and a damp t-shirt. I then quickly stuff the bag into its sack and roll up my pad around the sleeping back then placing both onto the bivy sack, which I roll up together and strap onto the bottom of my pack. Sitting up against the pack, I pull on socks and boots and go over to where my food is hanging from a tree. Undoing the knot in the rope suspending the bag in midair, away from animals, I drop the bag to the ground. By the time I get back to the stove, the water is boiling. I dig into the grub sack and pull out a pouch of oatmeal and a tea bag. I pour the oatmeal mix into a bowl, drop a tea bag into a cup, then pour hot water over the two and stir. There’s still half a pot of water. I place a pouch of rice into the water, letting it continue to boil as sit down, leaning back against my pack. I pull a piece of dried pineapple out of my grub sack and cut it into the oatmeal. As the rice cooks, I eat my oatmeal, stopping occasional for a gulp of tea or to swat at a mosquito. After a few minutes, the rice appears cooked. I turn the stove off and as the flame dies, the sounds of nature return. I finish my oatmeal and tea, wash out my spoon and bowl with the starchy water used to cook the rice. using the tea bag as a scrubber. I return the hot rice pouch to the pan; it’ll be my lunch. As the stove cools, I go off to take care of nature and to brush my teeth. When I return, I pack the stove and grub sack into my pack. Shouldering the pack, I realize it no longer feels heavy. After two months on the trail, it's a part of me. It’s barely six A.M. There’s a slight mist over the river. I’ll make good time before the day gets too hot.
---

Today’s Sunday Scribbling challenge is to write on the one word prompt, “Simple.” I'm writing about a morning on the trail—using memories of hiking along the Housatonic River on the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut. The picture is from the Appalachian Trail in western Pennsylvania.