The full
moon woke me in the early hours before dawn. I turned in my sleeping bag seeing
my fellow travellers were still asleep.
I lay
listening to the dawn unfold, fighting the urge to extract myself from the
warmth to go to the toilet, necessity eventually won over warmth. Crawling back
into my bag stillness returned. In the distance the sound of a truck winding
its way up the road, we had climbed last night, drifted over the valley.
Slowly
others started to wake around me and before long I could hear the sound of a
gas cooker being coaxed into life. Reaching in to the bottom of my bag I
retrieved my cooker and too started the morning ritual. Taking a cup of hot water
I spooned large spoonfuls of fresh ground coffee. Setting it to side I
waited.
They say the
first hit of heroin is the best and those afflicted by the drug spend a lifetime trying to visit that first event over and over. For me it is coffee, not
just any coffee but the first of the day coffee that has the same effect. I
spend the balance of my day trying to revisit the first hit.
Sitting in
my sleeping bag I look across to the hills we must climb today, I take a long
pull on the cup I hold between my hands and let the magic of the drug take
hold.
