Amphibious

The air was cold when I awoke in the tent. It was small--a two-person, it claimed, provided that those people were both not much over five feet tall. I stretched my legs straight; my head and toes opposed the tent walls. Dew rolled down the canvas and onto my forehead. I pulled open my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. The full rush of morning air hit me at once. I breathed in the mountains, the tallest trees I had ever seen, the ash of last night's campfires. 

Laura awoke soon after. She joined me several yards away from our tent and over a small hill where grass turned to sand and rock as the Smith river gave quiet gurgles against the shore. 

"This is it," I said. "We've been talking about it this whole trip, and this is it. No one is awake yet. I am going skinny dipping." 

"You've been saying you wanted to, not me." She glanced around, confirming that the woods were the only witness to our words.

I started comically. I removed the first two long-sleeved shirts that I had worn to bed. Then t-shirt. Then t-shirt. Then t-shirt. The layers peeled away until I was standing bare. I looked around again. At this point, it didn't really matter. I stumbled over the final rocks until my toes touched the edge of the water. The previous night, those same rocks had been leaping with jelly-bean frog-lings. Now they were still. 

I stepped in and felt the instant rush. My intake of breath felt void of air: sharp, empty. It felt good. I stepped in further. I continued in to my waist. I looked back at Laura sitting on a stone near the top of the hill. I faced the water ahead. A quick inhale pulled me forward; I reached, arms first, and let the water touch each fragment of me individually. Seconds passed slowly, and the cold seeped in upon impact. I wanted to stay in the soluble blanket of mountain spring.

A quicker, sharper breath re-introduced air as I leapt my torso towards blue. I looked around, and the world was clean. I was clean. I leaned back into a float. The water gently tickled the sensitive skin that was nearly always covered. Breath warmed my lungs--outside in. Eyes closed, open. Breath in, out. There was nothing more than these patterns. 

A few minutes later, I stood. I stepped from stone to softened river stone towards shore. I wrung out my hair and shook my limbs. My towel was locked in the car. I dressed with what I had: pants, t-shirt, fleece. I sat on a rock next to Laura, my breath still in short spurts. The breeze pricked bumps into my skin, which felt like burning as the remaining water rolled down. Morning birds solicited their call-and-response across the water. Eyes closed, I felt it; I felt the rock beneath me; I felt the motion of the water; I felt the sounds of the surrounding wildlife. 

A few hours later, I thawed after melting my companions in the car on the way to a hiking trail. 

"You're the dumb one who jumped in the river early in the morning," they told me, begging to turn the heat down.

I couldn't deny it. True, the sun hadn't even cleared the hills. True, the fog had barely settled above the treetops. True.

But I needed it.