Transport yourself to this abandoned island, among horses, seagulls, waves, snow-capped peaks; here nature has taken over, the beauty of a solitary place where paths and trails help us to appreciate all that nature offers us.
– About Land, Cloud Island
So reads the description for the public Homestead region of Cloud Island, another location in Second Life Shawn Shakespeare pointed me towards at the start of July 2023 and which I finally managed to drop into during the latter half of that month.
What appears to be a group build under the Country by V&L partnership, led by LunetteLuna and Vincy7, this is a setting which does pretty much what it says on the tin: offers a natural, almost untamed island location where nature is in command, and the touch of human hand is light. It’s a place ripe for exploration on foot or on horseback, and where lovers of all things equine will feel very at home.
These latter points are immediately apparent at the coastal landing point on the east side of the island, where a small cup of a beach, swept by spray and rain, is cupped within the protection of low-lying and outstretched arms of rock as they reach towards deeper waters.
Here, far enough from the spray, rain and flotsam the tide has brought to the sand to avoid getting wet, a horse is hitched to a rail, ready to rez a rideable version for visitors to use in their explorations. Roughly-made steps sit just behind this rezzer, pointing the way for explorations to begin.
Of course, you don’t have to necessarily take to one of the horses available in the rezzer; if you have a wearable horse, you can opt to use that, or you can opt for good old shank’s pony. Whichever you take, the island offers multiple routes of exploration, some forming trails which follow the natural lie of the land and might have – at least in part – be the result of the local wildlife using them down the years; others carry hints that humans are responsible for them, and sit as a reminder that whilst deserted now, the island wasn’t always so.
One of these trails circumnavigates the island, skirting between water and hillsides, passing around the coast and under rocky arches, revealing places to sit and evidence of past habitation and tragedy, with an attempt at preventing further such tragedies standing just off the coast to the north before the trail returns once more to the landing point and the stream tumbling down through the island’s single, deep valley.
Depending on the direction taken when setting out to follow the path, visitors might quickly come across a track running up the valley and the pool of water within it, or around the outside of the ridge forming one side of the valley as the trails climbs north around the island, a further path leading up to the head of the valley to overlook the falls feeding the broad pool below.
Another path almost reaches into the valley, this time from the landward side of the island. The path switchbacks its way up through the hills from the landing point, dividing as it goes, one arm reaching up and then down into the valley, another passing over the ridge separating the east and west sides of the island, plunging down on the far side to re-join the coastal trail, whilst a third travels south along that same ridge to where it forms a headland and a bench under the spreading branches of an aged tree.
For those wishing to climb the snowy heights , a further path continues upwards into the snows and the clouds before once again switchbacking back down to the remnants of what might have once been a small homestead farm on the island – and if so, possibly account for the horses and goats now present across the landscape.
Rugged in its beauty, open to a wide range of EEP settings and ripe for photography and exploration, Cloud Island makes for an ideal destination for exploration and the camera-happy.
SLurl Details
- Cloud Island (Androviel, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 