She wore her boots the whole time.

   Our educational leaders were sometimes comical in digging deep for what had been imprinted on them in order to weigh if that was the best way to proceed.  One guy would pause, tap his head like Poohbear, recollect, then dive into relaying the way forward or vigorously shake his head and wheeze, that's not gonna work this time.  Others were challenged by colleagues to Okay, do that but do it creatively.  The word creative was as stressful to some as using a firearm.  One new mama, self-proclaimed 'not creative', tied breakthroughs in personal creative technique to counseling, but was still shy about letting others see her creativity.

  "Susan" The hoarse whisper was a mixture of tone--frantic, demanding.  The moon had disappeared from fingernail to new/none visible.  Susan didn't answer.  Other girls and women bumped into eachother as they came off the walking path and clustered on the edge of a campsite.  

    Susan stood just near a lit-inside dome tent and put down a garbage bag.  She began to undress to her bathing suit.  The whisper screeched, "OH MY GOD, Susan!"

    Inside the dome tent five people were huddled as if the tent were a life raft at sea.  Assessing the day.  In getting "real" from training into field assessing the day included the good, bad, and ugly on what all had happened in the twenty-four hour cycle.  All of us had had to gear into 24/7 mode because we had troops overseas.  "He said that?"

  "Uh, yeah.  Then the other team lead "suggested" that we should know how just in case NOT because the government had become an inefficient whore of a bitch stingy ass too cheap to get us fuel."

  "Kelly," she roused at her name.  Someone swayed her knee cap back and forth so her hand automatically started swaying the person's next to her.  "Here.  Present and accounted for Officer," she said sleepily.  A person across from her replied, "Looks like we're nearing a lighthouse" and crouched closer to Kelly to check pupils with a pen flashlight.  Someone else asked, "Did you hear we might have to burn our shit as fuel?"

  Kelly smiled dreamily.  "Well, I hope it's frozen first."

  Susan's's brown boots and gray wool socks looked blobbish in the night vision goggles until a team lead adjusted the set (goggles and battery pack) like binoculars. We never called that person Hands right out loud.  A red laser light flashed into the sky, then in an instant forty laser lights shown on a woman in a bathing suit from every direction.  

  A person in a scuba suit ambled towards her.  "Why Mr. Aquaman, so funny to see you here this time of day."

  Did you say it's Tuesday?  The man's voice then asked Susan to find two sticks, Depends on what you're going to do with them. "I'm not, you are."

  "Can't you state your intended purpose for the two sticks?"

  Silence.

  "Please Andrew, we are wasting time."

  "I can't hear a damned thing until you use two sticks to open the sides of this headgear," he snarled.

  Susan knelt, kept the flashlight trained on his nose, and groped around on the ground with her free hand.  The strewn kindling wood proved rotty and she was almost backing into the tent by the time she found one strong enough stick and a tent stake.  Andrew raised his eyebrows and furrowed his brow as she came towards him warning, Okay I'm coming in.

  "Right where my laugh lines are, ooooo, lower, sort of above my ear, like

  "I can't see your ears dork

  "Like a pencil behind my ear."

  She winced.  He chuckled.

  "THERE!" She put the flashlight in her mouth and leaned back to gauge symmetry.  The flashlight hit on a gleam and a sparkle.

  "What the?"

  "Fridge."

  "What?"

  "You work on getting us a fridge." He took the flashlight out of her mouth and pulled the wedged headgear shut.  He shone the beam on the garbage bag.  "Should I ask?"

  Susan snatched the flashlight back and let her arms fall to her sides.  A movie scene would show bare and booted foot, people putting the cinch on despair.  A creek bubbling and rumbling rocks into resettling.  And Susan explaining, "A crazy idea really."

  He listened.

  The streams of political teansition and turnover of the economy had propelled people from sandbagging and ditch digging through chaos to surface.  A new generation of adults were stepping up.  But the old guard was

  "A different breed."

  "Yeah."

  "Why a bag of mud?"

  "Aw shucks.  This gets at it.  I put a clump of homesoil in the bag all week every time one of those bastards cut a young person down.".

  He sighed.

  "I held my tongue and held my tongue and felt all the dreams and energy we'd shown up with like melt into a migraine.  Like there's no bridge between free will and life, living, and rules and regulations."

  "Well, it is a training phase for most people."

  "So anyway," Susan shown the light on the girls and women huddled around a tea light on a can top, "I thought I'd come down here, cover myself in mud, and say my prayers."

  "Can I watch?"

  She made a firm face against saying no.  "In theory, as God takes away my stress the clumps will fall offa me."

  Andrew grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the little path/road.  The tent door was being jiggled and the zipper pulled at somewhat roughly.  "MY GAWD!  WHAT DUD YOU PEOPLE EAT???!"