Sand

I get the idea that a relative of a friend died recently. Maybe up North?

Not sure. I bet the Germans have a word for it.

Maybe a relative of a relative? A very distant relative? I don't really keep up so much. A divorce? Something happened.

I'm at that point where shutting my eyes feels like swimming in shallow water along the Gulf of Mexico. But it takes so much work to actually turn off lights and noises, except if I leave them on they'll just wake me in a few minutes.

I need to spend more time sleeping outside.

Actually, that's something I've been craving lately. Maybe a riverbank, something to give the campfire some shelter.

I almost slept on a sandbar once. The closest I've gotten to sleeping on a sandbar, besides the time alluded to in the previous sentence, is when I got lost in the woods. After losing the trail, I found a small river and started walking downstream. I saw bobcat tracks in the mud. Eventually, the light fell, and the world turned the grey you only get in the wild between full daylight and sunset. Grey isn't the right word. Flat. That's a good one.

Anyway, I ended up finding a good rock in the middle of the stream. I was young, and worried about bobcats. The rock was still warm from sunlight and perhaps my body when the search party found me a few hours later.

(A rock is similar to a sandbar in that they are the same things at different points in the big timeline. Also, this river was vaguely but physically connected to the river which contained the sandbar that I earlier mentioned almost sleeping in.)