It Starts With a Shower

It feels like heaven. Or maybe it is heaven. To anyone else it's a hot shower, but when you are what I am, when you live like I do... It's tens of thousands of drops of liquid heat battering at the tension built in over-strained muscles from hours and days of manual labor.
You lift the pulaski, or ax over your head in one circular arc and bring it down in fluid motion; your hands come together at the base of your tool's handle and you pull causing the blade to slam into the hard packed earth. Sometimes you hit a root, sometimes a stone, and then sometimes, in a warm ray of sunshine, the God you've tried to forget your whole life shows a bit of that long missing mercy and you strike clear dirt.
I work for a week at a time in the woods and only come in on the weekends. I work cutting trails with my hands and arms and tools. I swing for a ten hour day in the sun and then sneak into my tent for a 15 degree night. ( my sleeping bag is rated for 20 degrees.)
I work in poison ivy all day and after fitful sleep I wake to it's sweet burning on my legs and arms. I wake up each day and swing and swing and sleep and swing and swing. And on the weekends, on those wonderful moments when I hike out to a cabin with electricity and running water, I shower. I clean my laundry and myself. I take sleeping pills at midnight and crawl into the hot, steaming, burning shower and I let it's torrent give hell to my aches.
At first I stand there not knowing how to react to my body's comfort, but after minutes pass by and I'm washed, I sink against the wall and sit on the shower floor letting the water beat me in my entirety. The shower head is only five feet above the floor, and I was graced with a height of 6' 2”. The floor lets me take in the water without crouching.
If I were a more simple man, and capable of such, I would cry here, but instead I let the water play my tears. I let it hit my shoulders and hair and feel it ride down my face to drip off my nose and chin. I reach up to the faucet from the pooling puddle on the concrete floor and turn the cold down so I can feel the heat more purely.
Time ticks by here and I know that I should get out soon and go to bed. My weary mind needs sleep. I need sleep. Before I got in the shower I threw my clothes in the dryer. After getting out I pull a pair of warm underwear on. I pull on some warm flannel pants, and ready a long sleeve t-shirt. It feels good against my still damp skin. I look in the mirror before I pull the t-shirt over my head and grin to myself. I've lost ten pounds in the last month alone. My abs are carved, “If only there was anyone here to see them.” I laugh to myself.
With the addition of the warm clean shirt, and reassurance that there are no ticks on my back, I finally head to my bed.
After a week of sleeping in a sleeping bag in the frigid night on a slightly sloped stretch of forest floor, with rocks and branches below my tent and therefore my bag, my bed is the only thing I've ever needed. I'm full, I'm clean, I've taken steroids for the poison ivy,and Benadryl to let me sleep through the itching. I close my eyes and wonder what tomorrow will bring.