River Shower

There’s a sketchy house near our jobsite.

Before we started, the public works crew warned us not to leave tools lying around. Cars come and go. Sometimes they sit in the driveway for hours. Dave and I keep an eye out for the unneutered Cane Corso that occasionally wanders over like we’re spotting for grizzlies.

Across the river are some remnants of an old stone dam and a sandy spot where you can wade in up to your knees. After a particularly long day of work last week, and no time to drive home before meeting friends for dinner, it seemed like a good place for a river shower.

I don’t know how clean I got, but I stood there in the river in just my shorts, scrubbing the dirt and rock dust off with a washcloth, watching it make little cloudy pools in the water before they swiftly dispersing. I imagined this was how the first settlers cleaned up while building the first homestead in Naples on this site in 17-something.

My brain pulled me out of the moment, as it often does. I wondered what the scene looked like from the other side of the river. Probably just some guy who’d wandered over from the sketchy house.

The river carried that thought away too.