Raindrops on Canvas

Through the small canal into the watery heart of Isla Mujeres the smell of charred meat entangles itself with the scent of beans stirred over slow fires. The fishermen along the shore wave as we glide past, only a foot of water under our heavy keel, a boat but not a boat in comparison to the brightly colored pangas and steel fishing boats lining the shore. "Buenos dias!" they yell, tending to the meat on the oil drum grill.
I breathe in the scents of Mexico as the sky begins to weep- large cold drops falling into the murky water as we throw lines over wooden pilings and the bowthruster growls and shakes the hull.
For a moment I recede into the past and my muscle memory flinches and jumps as the rain begins to wash away the salt of the passage. Run outside and catch it! it calls. Let the salt run through the scuppers then set up your rain catchers and fill the water tank! it continues. But of course I am not on Gitane, I am not on my sailboat with a 40 gallon water tank and no water maker, I am not rationing that 40 gallons for three weeks taking salt water baths and spraying precious fresh water from a pesticide aerator jug wrapped with a black trash bag to warm it with the sun, I am not washing my clothes in a tupperware bucket or thinking of creative ways to preserve cheese and fish without a reefer. But this is what my body remembers, this is what my body wants. The self sufficiency, the simplicity and joy of catching water with canvas, watching it swirl down into a reclaimed plastic jug, dripping inside and out with liquid that followed us in clouds from California.

I want to be that free, that simple, that pure, as the water that now drips from my face as I run along the flooded sidewalk, eager to be out in the elements, in the cold wet, in the life sustaining force that rules my life.

Water.