Just two days. Two days that felt like two years and also two minutes. River time is fairy time. You don't know what hour or even what day it is, unless you can tell time by the sun. And who really cares what time it is. There's nowhere to go, nothing else to do. The sun and the stones and the water are everything. They're all there is, all you need. Three nights and two days. If only we were there for longer! I honestly did not want to come home! I wanted to stay in the sun with the stones and the minnows and the water-skippers, with the eagles and the sparrows and the ducks, with the wind and the water and the people floating by with their radios and their super-loud conversations and their silly, cartoony tubes. I wanted to stay right there, with my book and my basket and my baby catching crayfish, and my husband skipping rocks, and my legs plunged into the cold, clear water, and then go up to the house for tacos for dinner and s'mores at the firepit and Taylor Swift on repeat and checkers before bed and baths together in the giant tub. I wanted to stay on the porch with my loves, drinking coffee by dawn-light, listening to owls hoot in the gloaming, looking for deer and rabbits in the grass, and watching the water roll and roll and roll on by. Time, mystical time, cutting me open then healing me fine. Oh, no, no, I did not want to come home. . . .
