Flotsam and Jetsam

A quick post before I head out to a forward operating base (FOB). We just traveled via land convoy from the relative comfort of the big base at Al Asad to the more primitive conditions at Hit. I traveled in the open back of a seven ton truck. The road was straight as an arrow for about 25 miles before we went au naturale. This side path had that corduroied texture that unpaved roads start to resonate with after hard use. . All along our drive partially filled water bottles littered the sand like fragments of sea glass. We passed through a large bullrush marsh. At a distance this expanse of thick fuzzy headed reeds had me imagining Sesame Street Big Birds massing in the same way Emperor Penguins do at the South Pole. This wetlands, like others I've smelled in tidal Virginia, was as fragrant as Job Johnnys at a rock festival. As we passed into the perimeter of the Hit base camp squadrons of swallow tailed magpies were doing recon patrols among the man-made berms and garbage piles.