Wednesday, August 13, 2008

GRASSHOPPERS MEMORIES

One of my youth memories is of walking across hay fields and encountering billowing waves of grasshoppers. These undulating clouds of voracious ruminants caused shimmering sun reflection as their gossamer wings foretold the evolution of helicopter transport.

They would pelt against me from head to toe and come in tidal wave proportion for as long as I chose to traverse a cultivated field.

I remember capturing reluctant coastal bermuda soldiers and having their brown digestive juices "spit" upon my hands from prehistoric mandible jaws. I caressed their saw-blade hind legs and wondered at the intuitive wave of their cerebral antennae.

As an angler, I callously impaled their segmented abdomens with my barbed hooks to safari with red eared bream.

Those were times before I knew of locust pestilence that stripped nutritional fields of all sustenance. Likely I was not cognizant of biblical plagues or other omens of hard times.

I only knew that the sun was on my face, I was free from worry, and Panell's pond was on the horizon.

Would that I be able to recapture those days of incredibly simple excitement, joy of being alive, wonder of nature, and the sheer joy of things as simple as grasshoppers.

No comments: