Waking Hours
By June Faraday
The coyotes laugh at us, roaming in the distance, because they know the quail have already flown over the fence lines at the first sight of the truck and the smell of gunpowder. My vest and jacket are too big, hanging loose over my frame. The cold air burns in my lungs. My friend is old and wiry with a permanent bend to his back, but his eyes are bright. My eyes are bleary, still fogged with a sleep that hasn't worn off. I haven't seen the countryside close enough to touch in my adult life. Most days, it's a dull blur through my windshield.
He produces what feels like a small campsite, pulling each piece from seemingly nowhere. A small coffee pot and grounds, a few mugs, compact stools, and a small fire. We drink coffee in the crisp morning, and I blink the sleep out of my eyes, watching the golden grass and the purple sky.
Our hunting is more like sight-seeing. Nothing comes home with us besides these memories and sticker burs stubbornly bored into our socks. I haven’t seen the world waking up in far too long, and I drink it down to the grit and grounds. It takes a practiced reminder to keep moving and not pause in the small creek, welled up to a stop in the small grove of trees; to not bend over so that my hair touches the water, searching the rocks for a salamander tucked into the mud.
We weave away from each other and back again, knitting across the hills. We move lightly over untrodden places. Oak trees sprawl, shading the burnt grass from the sun as it rises. Ground squirrels eye us with disdain, chirping sharp alarms to the rest of the world, in case they didn’t already know we were traipsing through their domain.
The truck ride back is content and quiet. I’m remembering now how good it feels to wake up with the world. To watch what creatures return to bed as the sun rises, and what life glories in the dark hours of the morning.
The only thing we have to show for our work is a printed film photo, of our red noses and chapped smiles on the dirt trail. I can still hear the coyotes’ laughter, the piercing and rolling trills, knowing we had slept in too late and risen too early to partake in any of their fun. They chatter their secrets and stories in a language I don’t understand.
My friend knows it. The spark in his eye betrays it. Maybe he forgot once like I did. Maybe he’s always known. It's why he meets me in those blue hours, content to sit with me and a mug, watching the world turn. It doesn’t have to be a hunting trip. He just needs an excuse to be there. He knows the secret to the coyotes’ fun because he’s awake to hear them share it, yipping and snapping as they trot across the field.
It reminds me of spending hours as a kid in acres that felt like wilderness— letting tree trunks tear up my knuckles, getting mud under my fingernails, tracking goat heads into the yard when I came back sun-baked and filthy. I loved the treasure of the world— the bugs, the creek life, the quail, the coyotes who know how to pause and to play like I did then.
The same glimmer in his eyes sparks that yearning again, that bone-deep ache for the smell of warm dirt in the sun, for cool grass under my palms, for babbling water brushing past me, and an air abuzz with the creatures around it. I laugh in my mind, in disbelief of myself. How could I ever forget it?
I had to blink the sleep from my eyes, drink down the aroma of a wild dawn, feel the tugs of the child who chased frogs into ponds, wake up again, and remember how to laugh with them.
This is June Faraday’s first publication, and we are very honoured to be the very first to host her work!