He knew it only took one slip, one step in the wrong direction, or one hesitation.
He knew.
He had been mindful for so long, this log run down the river was not his first.
His first had been scary but he was attentive and he learned, like a dance, it was like a dance.
A dance made him think of his first love, the girl he'd left behind, the girl on the east coast.
The east coast was his home, the west coast was his work, where he had come, travelled by train.
By train across the country, thousands of miles across the country, a long way from his first love.

THE RIVER
It was like a sleeping crocodile, you always had to be aware.
Sitting on the shore and watching it in peaceful days was a joy.
Watching it on stormy nights was also a joy.
So much to learn from the river, don't look away, don't turn your back.

THE DAY

So on this day of days, like any other day on the river of floating logs.
The logger knew how to stay afloat, how to dance the dance.
He watched his fellow loggers directing their pike poles into the log jam. 
He did the same every day. He did the same today. It was no different from yesterday.

THE MOMENT
Twenty five men were dancing the dance, prodding the floating logs, each one knew.
Each one lived in the moment.
The logger knew the men as well as he knew himself, they were like a family for they only had each other now.
It only took one moment, one broken step of the dance, to slip beneath the carpet of rolling logs.
To see above only a log wall, then darkness, water, cold and chilling, gasping, struggling, moment after moment.

THE FAMILY
They all tried to help him but feared for their own life. Parting the logs was dangerous but they parted them anyway.

They looked, they hoped.
Each time a gap was created the river-men waited hopefully, but the logger never appeared above the roily water. 

THE HOMECOMING
They gathered, all the family and even the logger's first love, wrapped in agony and grief.
The mother, tiny and frail. The father, tall and bent into the wind.

The relatives and friends that had come to bid farewell to a native son.

He had travelled too far from his east coast home. But now had travelled back, never more to roam.