Island, Essay Example

The old man wore eyeglasses to cover his cataract vision problems.  He pushed aside the broken plate that he used every single day for his meals over the last thirteen years.  Alone in his thoughts, he remembered the steppe homestead he once had.  The wide open prairie that converged into a mesa was the one location he could recall where he had actually been happy.  This was during a time before the crash that had him trapped on the island.

Along the bay straight, the island was close enough to the world but far enough to be found.  The old man had lived on this island since the crash and had only the creatures of the cape to keep him company along with the small valley flush with glorious green foliage.  Past the foliage, the old man was able to one day come to the foot of the sleeping volcano.  He climbed up the tall mass of land and looked over the cliff to see the harbor in the main land.  The old man was doomed to be tempted to return to society but remained powerless.

He would much rather have lived in desert, a flood plain, or even an empty canyon that had been carved by a passing glacier thousands of years before.  Instead, the old man was confined only to this area of swamp and beach where the sea level never stayed consistent and was too difficult to venture away from the island.  On this day, he traveled to the delta in the middle of the island to find his meal for the day.  There, he took his wooden spear that showed a decade of wear and began the hunt.  He found a few smaller tracks where crab and birds had ventured, but he was looking for something much larger.

The old man stepped into the river mouth and swam to the other side of the island.  As he stepped out, he could feel a tremble underneath his feet.  Immediately he knew that his time was coming to a close.  He looked upward and saw the explosion of molten lava leaping out of the mouth of the volcano.  In his last moments, the old man quietly placed his spear on the ground, bowed his head and said a prayer.  Finally, the old man would be free of this island prison and would once again be able to return home to see everything he had missed since his departure long ago.