Magicial Creatures in The Woods?

I tend to read a lot of fantasy, Robert Jordan a favorite author, Terry Goodkind another. I plead guilty to adoring Harry Potter. Pixies, trolls, fairies, dragons and other magical beasts of lore are make believe...or are they? I tend to think of them as ancients, actually spend time wondering if we are just to blind to see them in their homes. What if this land of make believe isn't so make believe at all, what if there really is and ancient energy force we've simply lost track of? This next small essay is a true story from my days out in California...maybe there is some magic after all.

Fairy Rings and Listening to the Ancients

So many manuscripts had spoken of them, I'd from time to time heard the stories, would never have dreamt I'd actually stumble upon one in this life. Yet I have been blessed with stumbling upon a fully complete and beautiful fairy ring, the mushrooms forming a perfect circle in which fairies are rumored to belong, where fables and stories spoke of passer bys enticed to dance their live?s away.

It was an early morning, the dew still fresh upon the grass, as I made my way along a gently sloping hillside away from my camp. I was Working my way up towards a grove of trees before the heat of the day made hiking to difficult and hot. As I topped a gently sloping meadow there it was, small purple and white wild flowers danced across the entire hillside, Golden rod gently waving in the breeze, at midpoint between myself and the line of trees, each blade of grass sparkling in the early morning rays of sun as if sprinkled with a billion zillion diamonds, and in the center of it all was a perfectly formed circle of mushrooms of varying shapes and sizes beckoning me to step inside...you could sense the magic, you could almost hear the gentle beat of drums as I grouched just outside, too timid or maybe leery to step inside. I?d read the rules, knew the story well and could not take the risk of forever dancing my life away at the start of such a perfect day.

Emotions flooded across my mind, tears of wonder washed across my eyes. I stopped just along the perimeter of this ancient magical circle and sat as peace and love washed across my soul...the magic was there and in some special way I was being blessed by the cosmos, a gift being shared from the wee folk that people insist are make believe. That morning, sitting outside this ring in a meadow of wild flowers I wondered. That morning, the sun's rays washing away the pains, I felt a purity, would swear to this day I heard voices whispering to my soul.

Eventually I made my way on up the hill and moved down the other side to spend the day soaking in the sun at Stenson's Beach before climbing my way back in the waning moments of dusk to my campsite. Coming back down and around the hillside my circle was gone, not a singular mushroom to be found...magic is a strange and mysterious force choosing where and how it will be seen or felt and by whom. Did I miss a chance by not stepping inside...I'll never know, but I do know there was magic in that field.