When I was a kid, I was very much the loner. I was way too weird for other kids to want to play with me and I wasn’t interested in the things they were interested in. My idea of heaven was to spend all day outside in the woods alone, hanging out with the trees and the creatures. I had a rough mountain pony called Topper (because no matter how bad other ponies were, he could top them). He had one wall-eye (blue eye) and a mean temper. He bolted when he got bored and loved to suddenly break out into a flat out gallop and then just as suddenly slam on his brakes and put his head the to the floor. I would, of course
being bareback, slip down his neck every time and land flat on my back in the mud. He loved it; what power!
So everyday I would spend a couple of hours trying to catch him until one day I decided not to chase him, which was what he wanted, but to sit quiet in the forest where he had dumped me and wait for him to come to me. So day after day I would sit among the fallen trees and thick broom bushes, laying back in the weak European sunshine, and wait for the brat to get bored. During that time I began to watch the squirrels and the birds. I loved talking to them in my mind and I would hold long imaginary conversations with them.
Once such day I was deep in conversation when I saw a wild rabbit. I had never seen a wild rabbit before and I was fascinated. During my childhood the government had seen fit to release a disease that would wipe out the rabbit population, which had grown out of control. The rabbits usually died a terrible agonizing death and I can remember when I was very young, about 5 years old, seeing the last death throes of a rabbit in the road. My father covered my eyes and told me not to look.
So to see a healthy wild rabbit in the late 60’s/early 70’s was rare. I watched him, thinking he was the most beautiful thing I had seen. Something happened at that point in my life, that instant. Something opened deep inside me and I looked around and saw just how beautiful everything was in this forest. Everything had life, a bright dazzling life that just was bursting with something that I didn’t even have the words for.
That day I felt like I had seen God for the first time. I was 9 years old and everything I touched—the trees, the plants, even Topper—spoke to me in a silent voice that made me feel like I was hearing for the first time. It was that moment that I became aware that there was something else in that forest with me; something that was not bird animal or human. I could feel it, I could hear it, but I didn’t know what it was.
Later that day I went home and was busy watching my mother. She would often be gone for very long periods of time so when she was around, I would sit and watch her—sort of filling myself up of her. I started to try and tell her what had happened that day, but it blurted out in a very clumsy way. I didn’t have the words in my brain to describe what had happened. But what I did get out was that I thought there was something else there in the forest with me that day. Could it be a ghost? “No “she replied, “it sounds like they were faeries.” She told me next time I went out to the forest with Topper and took a pack lunch, I should share some of it with them by leaving them the best and sweetest foods on a tree stump.
I did just that. Then I hid to watch and see if I could catch a glimpse of them coming to get their food. I had put out some grandma buns (my grandmother’s special recipe) and some plot toffee (a bittersweet toffee made with dark treacle and made only in the months of October and November), my favorite. But alas, no one turned up except a very excited crow. I kept waving him off the food and he would just caw at me.
I was so disappointed. I so wanted to meet with the faeries. I told my mother of my abysmal failure and she smiled a wide smile. “No Josie, they don’t eat like we do, they take the strength out of the food and leave what’s left for the creatures. And you can’t see the faeries with these eyes; you have to look at them in a different way. They don’t have bodies like we do. They are like Adam and Eve were before God gave them skin and threw them out of the garden. The faeries were never bad so they didn’t get skin and they are still in the garden.”
But I wanted to see them!! I did learn to feel them however. One of my favorite games as a child was the May Day precession. It was something we did every year where I lived and we would all have a large picnic afterwards. And I loved to recreate it. So I would get our family statue of the Virgin Mary and dress her up in flowers with a flower crown. I would place her on a book and parade around the garden with a sheet tied around me like a robe and in my arms was the flowered Virgin resting ceremoniously on my dad’s history book. I sang the old may song to her as I paraded with my two bemused cats following me with suitable dignity. Oh Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.
And something else followed me; I could feel them. Something that liked what I was doing and sang with me. And that feeling of companionship grew. And it also saved my life many years later when as a teen I was walking through a dark alley and was told by them to run. I ran like the wind. I found out the day after that the Yorkshire Ripper grabbed a student from that alley around the time I was walking through there, and he tortured and killed her. It would have been me.
They began to talk to me, to tell me about the trees and the wind and the horses. None of it was like conversation talk; it was not like talking at all. It was something else. At the time I wrote a poem about them, one that didn’t survive the ravages of time. But one line I can remember from it is…. And hear the whispers, mumbles and cautions, silent eyes that watch and wait…That was probably the best description that I could give. Where ever I went I could hear them and feel them, and they gave me a knowing.
And they taught me how to talk to birds. My mother knew how to talk to birds and it was not unusual to have a wild blackbird furiously banging on our window in the morning as it looked for my mother.
Since that time I too have tended to birds, both wild and exotic. Some have come to me with terrible injuries and the faeries have always helped me to find the way to treat them and get them better.
When I was in my early twenties, I went through a phase of thinking that my childhood interactions with the faeries where just the imaginations of a lonely child. I even went back to my forest as a young adult, just to look and convince myself that it was all in my head. The place, which I called the Blue Lagoon, had seemed to me in my childhood to be a deep wild forest with a beautiful lagoon and some mysterious ruins.
When I returned I found a small patch of woodland with a dirty pond full of trash and the remains of an old house. Nothing romantic at all. At that point I stopped putting out food for the faeries (something I had done ever since that wonderful day) and began an inner fight with myself. It didn’t last long. And they won.
Faeries are a part of everyday life, particularly if you live out in the country. I live on the edge of preserved wilderness in West Montana and faeries really make their presence known here. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes here, some look human where as others have no human features or shapes at all. I live near a place where two mountains come together and form a strange looking canyon. A powerful underground river rushes out from the side of the mountain and falls many feet before it carves a path through the forest here.
Working in that area, by the falls, is very powerful; the spirits of the land and the Goddess are very apparent there. It is on tribally protected land, which ensures that there will never be buildings here and that the spirits of the land will be undisturbed. I go there often and it is my favorite place to do a faery realm meditation.
But look around you, even in the city. They are there and would really benefit from contact. Feed them, tend them and tend the birds and animals around you. None of them are pests; they are all creatures in balance.
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