enthusiasm is contagious

(on the boat, drifting)

about the time she led a canoeing trip that ended in yellowjackets

a comrades’ insistence on swimming to the lighthouse

the careful maps we’d made devoted to driving distances and train times now useless

we were again without the modern implements of communication, and alive

grateful to not be at sea

grateful to landfall, the rescuers, & the amusements we were capable of in the absence of telephones, sails, paddles