A Story with a Number of Turns - Part I

I used a period of enforced leisure to go wandering through my favourite landscapes, clambering stylishly over stiles and tripping inelegantly over exposed roots. I had a lovely afternoon of ponder dipping, my little net capturing some strange creatures from the lower depths.

I also took a number of funny turns and found myself lost in a meadow, in as far as one can find oneself at the same time as being lost. At the edge of the meadow, as it dipped towards a neglected hedge where cowslips, buttercups and primroses gathered in collaborative yellowness like lumpy custard, I espied a pair of horns moving slowly along the grass line. I was going to say "peeping over the ridge", but horns don't really peep. Also, I assumed that the horns were part of something larger, a part of the whole, rather than an entity in their own right. Hence my wariness. Although if I had thought they were an entity in their own right, I might also have felt a bit wary then as well. A number of possibilities flashed through my finely- tuned mind, the survival instinct kicking in like a wild horse. Could it be a bull? Could it be a ram? A goat? Pan? The devil himself? Rhinoceros? An hallucination caused by tripping on the roots? The answer was more unexpected than any of the fine possibilities I had created in my mind, for in slow motion - it was quite a steep bank - a man appeared beneath the horns. As is the way in country matters, it seemed natural that we should start up some sort of conversation, although it was hard to find common ground beyond the fact we had ended up in the same meadow, and it was difficult not to mention the horns - the rural equivalent of the elephant in the room.

It seemed that fate and a series of open gates had led us both to this moment, there could have been no other outcome. I had met Joe Leff, the hiking Viking, mythologised throughout the region but manifest here in a meadow. It also transpired that Joe Leff was a fellow field filosopher and he readily agreed to share some of his wisdom in the weeks and months to come. He will tell his own story, possibly in revenge for the tales I regaled him with regarding my adventures on land and sea, beginning when I once took a wrong turn...