Journey to Cropol Island

Two Young Girls at the Piano, Auguste Renoir

July 14

It was a stormy night but we got on the boat safely. We had Pat and Dinity with us. Our map was safely in our clutches. We would get to Lilli Daisy in 5 hours. It would take 10 miles to the first resting place. We would be careful about the whirlpool. Our map was signed in blood.

We were 11 and 12 and didn’t yet know that we would grow up to be writers.

But there we were on the floor of Leah’s bedroom taking turns writing entries for our journey to Cropol Island. It was the story of our mission to find a cure for Dora’s Deadly Disease. Our task was to search for the Zorple Zemaya and Loople Trygania leaves to extract a healing substance called Gloopoxia Montrezoid in the deep dark-dense-dim-dusky swamps of Cropol Island.

July 19

We started exploring the island. And all of a sudden we spotted the Cropol Island Crobunchi. We didn’t realize that it would be part whale, part bee, and part snail and 10 feet tall. We started running for our lives. Then a strange and unusual thing happened! The Crobunchi grew 50 ft. tall in 50 seconds and opened his choppers and swallowed us! We are still alive but in the Crobunchi’s throat.

Our imaginations were on fire. As was our love of language. See the alliteration? Hear the sound of those plants? Sense that pacing? Scene setting? Conflict and drama?

Something made me hang on to the original loose leaf pages with our preadolescent handwriting (see image below). Reading it now, more than 50 years later, I’m struck by how derivative it sounds (stormy night, map signed in blood, running for our lives, swallowed by a monster) but there’s some innovation, too. We wrote it slowly, over the course of several weeks; a tale-tell sign of childhoods untouched by electronic distractions.

Inside the Crobunchi, our heroes pick up the leaves from the Floople Tranagan, only to discover later that they held magical powers that would come in handy as we explored the creature and Cropol Island.

Magic was likely to be important then. Leah’s father had died suddenly a year or so earlier and his death shook the whole neighborhood. In the early 70s, there wasn’t much in the way of sensitivity for children experiencing such a loss. With hindsight I see that for two elementary school girls who loved books and stories and words, the page called, offering a bit of healing in the form of storytelling.

That I kept these pages tells me that words would ultimately matter. That we were destined for lives in storytelling and the arts. At camp, we fell in love with Joni Mitchell and learned to play guitar. We wrote songs together on the piano. After college, we became journalists. I moved into writing, storytelling, poetry and photography. Leah moved into medical writing and continued to pursue music. You can hear some of her beautiful early work here. She plays in cafes and is currently in the studio recording new songs.

Such a gift to be able to return, again and again, to the magic of storytelling through the arts.

What activity, hobby or pastime had your heart at 9, 10 or 11, the ages before family, teachers or the world at large imposed its expectations of you? Before your resume? Before you began to pay attention to grades or awards?

The original “Journey to Cropol Island.”

 Coming Up

“Writing Letters: Dispatches to the Divine,” Ritualwell (online), April 4, 11 am - 1:30 pm. (CT)

“When Everything Changed: Writing Your Marker Story,” Story Studio Chicago (online), Tuesday, April 29, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm.