It had been more than ten days since I had a shower. It was a sweltering summer in South Korea. I worked the night shift, plotting points on maps and playing war games. During the day I sat at the gate and made sure that only the right people visited.

The forest wasn’t too different than the ones I was used to in Montana. Some of the bugs were more like the ones I’d seen in Texas.

When I wasn’t working, or on guard duty, or sleeping, I wandered around. I walked down the road. I visited the Korean guards. I prayed.

It had been more than a week since I had a shower and there was a cloud of thick rich rising bread odor around me. There was a cool little creek that flowed in clean white rapids through the draw. I slipped off the road and went down to the creek. I took my uniform off and splashed around in the icy water. My whole body turned pink because of the sharpness of the cold water.

I felt so fresh, clean, vibrant, alive…as I walked back...I even broke into a skip.

“You look . . . fresh.” said one of the guys. I smiled smugly and shrugged.

The next day we took a shower run, and we got shower runs every other day after that. I wonder how they knew I went skinny dipping during my sleeping time.