Sitting in the knarled, stretching limbs of a tree, talking and singing to fairies was a common pastime among my friends and I when we were younger.
We would go into woods, whatever woods there were, and we looked for the faces in the trees. We’d cast spells on each other, putting on airs and accents, jumping and frolicking with wings on our backs that only we could see.
We’d sneak herbs and spices out of our parent’s cupboards when we thought they weren’t looking, making potions and brews in little glass bottles.
When we learned to write, we would make spell books; when we got better at drawing, we would sketch our fairy friends.
Fairies, giants, dragons, winged horses, mermaids, and monsters – these were our childhood companions, our friends and enemies as we took turns playing the good side against the bad.
I look back on all of that with a heavy heart. I walk in some of those woods with my dog, and I still see the faces of the trees.
Sometimes I wave. Sometimes if the face is not friendly, I walk faster, glancing over my shoulder.
With a pang, I wonder if others my age would look at a tree, searching for its eyes and nose and mouth.
The woods have always been a second home to me. When I was a child, my friends and I were the kings and queens of the woods, valiantly defending them from all the evils that came their way. We would walk amongst the undergrowth, pausing to admire and converse with our subjects, the flowers and the fairies. The wind rustling the leaves was our fanfare.
When do we stop talking to the fairies and fighting with the goblins? At what point does what was once innocent make-believe become embarrassing?
Is it when we stop being told, “go play outside,” and spend our time looking at screens instead?
I’ve always wondered what becomes of the nixies in the ponds, or the dragons in the meadow – do they mourn the loss of their playmates? Peter, Paul and Mary’s 1963 classic folksong Puff the Magic Dragon laments the loss of childhood whimsy: “A dragon lives forever but not so little boys, Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys …”
Even when I was little, this song made me weep; I dreaded the day that Puff would bend his head in sorrow and slip into his cave.
Maybe I long for a time when I was ‘Queen of the Woods.’ I certainly miss having endless hours to use up, playing outside with my friends, human and otherwise. Still, I consider myself lucky. Fortunately, I have parents who never told me to come in from the woods. Yet, like most teens, I face mounting responsibilities and, sadly, spend less of my time outside.
Yet the woods still draw me.
I don’t think that getting older means leaving the magic that flows so naturally in childhood, behind. I think it means looking for magic in different places: a pearl of dew cupped in the hollow of a four-leafed clover; the filtered sunlight that forms a perfect circle around the base of the tree where my childhood fairies danced.
There is still magic everywhere, and in everything.
When the left socks go missing in the dryer, was it the house brownie who took them? Who is it that puts that library book back on your desk after you’d thought you lost it?
Upon further reflection, I don’t think the dragons and the nixies mourn their playmates at all. Perhaps when we are children, magic seeks us out. But as we get older, we have look for it.
Maybe the reason most people stop thinking of their friends in the trees, or of the voices that sang while they danced in fairy circles, is because they never left.
Maybe, they followed us inside.
Marlowe Evans is a senior student at Thomas Haney and head delegate of the Model UN Delegation who writes about youth issues.