Chuck over at Terrible Minds threw down a challenge. Write a sub-500 word short story inspired by a randomly selected song title. Here’s my 481 word entry entitled, “Nothing (Without You)”.

…

I watch the drops of water arc perfectly off the tip of my ashen paddle as I swing the blade forward for another stroke. After a week of paddling, my blade returns to the water without making a sound. As the concentric circles spawned by each droplet create elegant interference patterns on the surface of the river I realize: this is what I’ve always wanted.

Every time life got too busy—too noisy—I would lose myself in the map. While my coworkers would try everything from massage therapy to sleeping pills to manage their stress, my eyes drifted along the topographical lines that marked the contours around this riverbank. I swear that I could feel my systolic pressure dropping as each rapid, portage and campsite flickered through my mind.

At first the dream was too distant to be real. The river was too wild, too other, to be approached. It belonged to the journal entries of the classic voyageurs and National Film Board of Canada educational videos. Then, with each decision (authorizing vacation time, booking the flight, renting gear, planning food, etc.) the river became more tangible.

Now, I’m here. The near-deafening white noise of the class three rapids behind me fade into the ever-present background music of wind on pine needles. As the decibels drop, each paddle stroke offers an incrementally deeper state of awareness. A whisky-jack notes my progress by flitting from tree to tree, hoping for food scraps from my evening meal. A school of minnows dart away from my paddle which they perceive as a predator. Aquatic flora less than a foot below me bends to the will of the current, pointing the way to the sea.

I’m not ready to come home. The juvenile homesickness that tested me on those early excursions into the wild has long passed. I know that this is where I belong. The worst this trip has to offer—the water that’s soaked into the foam straps of my pack from a too-close encounter with a watery haystack, the dark-grey hordes of blackflies that seem genetically impervious to DEET, the ache of shoulder muscles called back into action after a winter of disuse—holds more inherent life than any day at the office. No, I don’t want to be home. This is better than home.

I’m trying desperately to seize every moment of this trip. My camera’s safe and sound back home—no LCD screen will mediate this journey. Gone, too, is my watch. The artificial convention of hours, minutes and seconds seem trite against the ancient rhythms of sunrise and sunset.

The sun is approaching the southwestern treetops so I need to find a relatively level spot to live for a night. I’ll pitch my bivy sack, light a fire, rehydrate some food and crawl into my mummy bag for the night … and think about you.