The Legend of Yes, I'm Lost Island

*Note: The following text is a story written for one-half of the points for my final project in an undergraduate geography course I took at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. Keep in mind, this project was assigned to a 23-year-old. This is just one of the many reasons I have for believing the post-secondary education system in this country is failing its students. What does this assignment have to do with anything?! Enjoy.

Yes, I'm Lost Island was discovered in a mix of frustration, irritability, anger, and finally relief. It happened one day in the late 1700s, when a ship carrying a unique cargo of the infamous bana-na fruit was lost to the sea en route to southern Florida to drop off a fresh load from South America.

The ship had made its way north through the Caribbean, fighting off nasty bugs, weather, and Spaniards, and just when they thought they might finally get a break from their struggles they were attacked by a giant wala-wala squid. Though the squid fought ferociously it was finally defeated, but not until it had torn the ship in two and killed all but five or six of the crew. Everything was lost save those poor souls and their lifeboat.

They floated around for a few days until finally, taken with a strange current far from their original course, they sighted land. The men heaved to, and by nightfall of the next day they landed on the edge of what seemed to be a sticky, gross swamp. It had a putrid odor, and the amphibians who inhabited its murky depths looked like tadpoles with human heads. They piddled around in the boat until they found land solid enough to walk on, and when they did the captain of the boat said to himself, audibly, "Where the heck am I?" The swamp has retained the moniker Where the Heck Am I Swamp to this day.

The group decided to search the island for some sort of food, and made their way to the north, trying to keep the coast within eyesight. After a few hours they reached a forest where every single tree looked exactly the same. The men began to get angry and one screamed, "Dammit I need a map!" The man who had yelled out was the ship's priest, and the rest of the crew, thinking it was funny to hear a priest curse, decided to name the forest I Need a Map Forest to commemorate the occasion. Yet there was no food to be found, or even game, so the group continued on around the coast for some time, finally reaching the other side of the island, where they found a stream. At this point everyone was on the verge of serious dehydration, so though bitter about their circumstances, they drank gratefully of the newly found fresh water. At Least We Found Water Stream is still flowing today.

From the stream the group made their way through another godforsaken swamp (hence the name - Godforsaken Swamp), and another forest similar to the one before. This time everyone had had enough of seeing the same tree over and over, and the group unanimously agreed that the title of these woods should be the Frustrated Forest. That night the group made camp, finding some berries to snack on in the forest, and come the next day they continued on around the island. After a few hours they came to a fresh water lake, near the edge of which was a beautiful forest spilling over with delicious fruits and berries and plenty of game. They dubbed this forest The Good Forest and the lake Thank God Lake, for they knew that without the lake there would probably be no good forest at all, and without the good forest they probably would have starved.

The crew settled by the lake and over the next few months explored the rest of the island. They found that there were two mountains, and dubbed the western mountain Highest Peak Mountain and the eastern mountain Other Peak Mountain, because the western peak was much higher than the other. They also found another forest, similar to the first two, but black as night, and they called it the Dark Forest, and did not go there often.

After six months or so the group's signal fire was seen by a merchant ship traveling on its way to the British colonies and the ship picked them up in the bay just to the southwest of Thank God Lake. To this day the bay retains the name it received from the shouts of joy that proceeded from the mouths of the crew. It is called Yay Bay.