Step One: Make dinner. Find cooking pot, scoop up about 2 cups of water from the creek. Throw in a couple small handfuls of dehydrated garden vegetables, such as carrots, peppers, green beans and zucchini. Boil vigorously for several minutes, until vegetables plump up and soften. Water-borne cooties ought to be killed by all the boiling. Turn off heat. Dump in a package of instant mashed potatoes. Stir. Open a packet of tuna and stir in. Cover and wait.
Step Two: Grab camera to snap photos of wildfire torching across meadow from camp.
Step Three: Collect pot of potatoes, radio, and camp chair. Walk out on big silver log, establish camp chair, sit.
Step Four: Enjoy potatoes and candlelight, while flapping hand with the spoon at errant mosquitos. Listen for your name being called on the radio. Scrape pot clean.
Step Five: Wash pot. Take one more set of weather observations. Notice bats fluttering in dusk, and little trout exuberantly flipping at the surface of the creek. Go to bed, because the lightning starts at 1:30 a.m. and you will need all the sleep you can get.
In The Rainshadow 
A little lonesome… but a little lonesome is a beautiful thing to me.
Reading this reminds me of the beautiful spring brook at the base of my little Howling Mountain, where the woods have never (to my knowledge) been cut… this brook is choked with emerald green watercress, but the thought of possible Giardia cooties scares me off it, pretty much. Once in awhile, I’ll take a little and wash it in salt water.
I have seen rarest of the rare warblers there.