Frank, in tent

Halfway out of his bag (the tail of a giant rumpled fish) he's some Teutonic merman of the woods. He leans on elbows, golden in the flashlight, scanning topographic maps, his spectacles exotically pedagogic when he looks at me above their rims, with new surmises in that voice of his, whose phrases rise a note or two, as bubbles will aspire to atmosphere, and sunny people's script on lineless paper can't resist angling up.