10-20 friends used to show up at this one lake easily off one group text. We’d spend hours talking, sitting on an old wood dock drinking beers and skipping stones we picked up from the loose gravel along the shore, and yelling to hear our echoes spread through the mountains. One time we hung up a rope on a thick tree branch and went swinging off the hill and flinging ourselves into the water. As the sun would begin to set we’d lite a small bon fire on the shore and sit around it staring into the flames philosophizing, occasionally some guys and girls might wander off into the woods to make out, smoke some weed or do who knows what. And when it got very late, we’d drive out to whatever burger joint was still open and sit on the curbs in parking lots eating greasy food. Always 10 or 20 people deep, just hanging out. Just another random day in our lives, oblivious to the dark shadow slowly crawling across our world.