Sunday 3 July 2011

Fumbling in the Landscape

Over the next few weeks, we'll offer teasing tastes of what The Wanton Green will hold. Your appetiser for today is a morsel from "Fumbling in the landscape" by Runic John


Not too long ago a childhood friend I hadn’t heard from in years got in touch to say that he had been walking near the river we used to play in together as children and was horrified to see that Grasshopper Island had completely disappeared and he was wondering if I was aware of its disappearance!

Strangely enough, I too had been revisiting that path a couple of weeks before and I had to tell him that I too had been shocked to find our illustrious and joyful island was now nothing but dark swirling waters.

As children, Grasshopper Island was a magical and wondrous place, where, once we had climbed the great cliffs that surrounded the main approach to the island and had managed to navigate the treacherous rapids that separated the island from the mainland, we were totally isolated from the rest of the world. Here, in the sweltering summer sun, to the background songs of ten thousand grasshoppers (which gave Grasshopper Island its name) we would spend blissful hour upon hour adventuring. Amongst numerous other achievements, we discovered the fossilised remains of the earliest life that had inhabited the island and unearthed the fossilised footprints of an unknown (at that time) species of dinosaur, we found the site of the ancient city that once occupied the island and discovered the graves and lost treasures of the long overthrown royal dynasty that ruled there. We mapped the Island from end to end.

No comments:

Post a Comment