How it opens
The survey camp sat above a mountain lake that summer, measuring a valley the government intended to fill with concrete and money.
You were Lockley, a surveyor's assistant with a theodolite, a sidearm you had never used, and two weeks of leave due.
The radio says the world is ending in eleven crises before breakfast. Up here I can't even manage one.
Then the world can keep its eleven crises. Up here the only crisis is the fire, and I'm winning.
You are not winning. You are negotiating, and the fire knows it.
Choose
Row her out to the middle of the flat tin water and drift.
Cook over an open fire badly, and let her improve it.
Sit on the cabin step with the radio off and the stars coming out.