The First Hit

The full moon woke me in the early hours before dawn. I turned in my sleeping bag seeing my fellow travellers where 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 spoon fills 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 life time 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.