Canvas

I’d found this view of the South Fork of the Payette River a few summers earlier, when the grass was tinder dry. I came back in the early evening of a December day for a different look.

As I kicked through the snow from the highway toward the viewpoint, the sound of the river carried sharp through the heavy winter air.

The cold allowed me to bundle up in my favorite canvas jacket: coarse on the outside, velvety red flannel inside. I wear short sleeves beneath it. Its corduroy collar pressed against my face. My whiskers scraping against it: tshskkk, tshskkkkk. I slapped my arms with opposite hands, the way I always do when I put it on, catching the jacket’s particular smell. Cotton, a touch of dust, and the musk of the trail.

Before I left the house, my wife had leaned in. “You smell like the outdoors.”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”