The story
The landing was empty when I arrived. A pair of cockatoos argued somewhere behind the shed, but the river itself was still. I tied the canoe to the oldest post and waited for its reflection to stop trembling. There was no reason to hurry the final minute.
Inside the bag, the notebook had acquired a bent corner and a new smell of canvas. I counted the pages I had used, then the ones left blank. The second number pleased me more. A journal with room in it is a useful kind of invitation.
I carried the tackle tin up the steps and looked back once. The canoe was small against the water. All week I had thought it was carrying me through a landscape. Now it seemed the landscape had been carrying the stories home.
A return can also be the beginning of the next blank page.