On Falling into Autumn:

I just love the Autumn. Those of you who know me, know that fact already.

Autumn had been tickling at my nose and singing soft and sweetly to my heart for a few days now. And yesterday it enveloped me in earnest.

I walked out the door to go to the vegetable garden, like all the other days there are crops, and check on what was available for the days food prep, and I got lost.

No, not in the physical. I knew right where I was… but my mind went elsewhere. I followed a bumble bee, and a butterfly, and a toad. I watched the light from the sun play in dappled puddles on the ground and bushes of the woods. I was thinking about the blog of Sooticus the other day, I think.

It was the light that drew me in. In the Autumn the trees and plants start to wilt and shrink back readying themselves for the color change. Space and air, light and views appear that had been hidden in the summer months.

Sooticus was finding ‘Urban Fairies.’ I went hunting in the woods for Fairies and their friends. Wood nymphs, Elves, Sprites, Ents, any or all of them would do. I peeked around trees. I crept along the ground looking for little foot prints or lost belongings, any evidence at all of their inhabitance in my woods.

And although I didn’t find anything I could hold onto or show to anyone else, I did get I glimpse into their world.

I had been looking for a while and I was getting a bit tired. I lay on my back looking up at the canopy of trees, not wanting to leave the woods just yet. I was watching the picture show of shapes made by the leaves in the breeze against the blue sky. And that is when it happened… A Fairy climbed into my hair to watch the show with me.

I didn’t move or even speak. I acted like it happened every day to me, but in reality it had been a while since it happened at all and a long time since it happened on a regular basis.

I waited and listened. They started to talk to one another, in that tinkilly way that little folk talk, talking with the bugs and birds chattering all around. I listened and marveled with all my might as I watched the show of leafy silhouette pictures playing over head.

And then they were gone. A hawk had flown over the trees.

I got up and shook the detritus and old leaf matter out of my hair. But I was left with a feeling of loss and loneliness that only having been with fairies and the like and having them steal away in an instant can bring. Having one moment been full of their company and trust, when they are gone, you feel the weight of the space they left behind. But at the same time you feel happyful from just having been so close to their world.