Fairies & Plums & Bears, Oh My!

Woodland Springs is the name the Fairies gave us for the magical land that has graciously offered itself as home to Fairy Woodland. It’s 23 acres of woods, streams, meadows, ferns, fruit trees, and blackberries on the Central Oregon Coast with lots of wild critters and magical hollows for Fairies to play. Rain is a frequent visitor, especially during the winter, when it sometimes stays for days and days, allowing the sun to peek in the windows for only brief moments in the late afternoons.

Winds of all kinds blow through as well. Today the winds are flying from the south and west with enough force to bend the fir trees in a wild dance and blow the wind sideways past my window. If I put my ear on my shoulder, I can almost tip the world at a 45º angle. The Fairies always love it when something happens to make me stand on my head.

Plum blossoms before the winds came.

The winds have scattered the remaining plum blossoms. We’re hoping most of them were pollinated and set fruit before being torn from the trees today; if not, we’ll sorely miss the tart sweetness this summer and we’ll have a very unhappy black bear roaming the neighborhood. She comes for the plums every summer, making herself at home for a couple of weeks in the magical tangle that is the Grandmother Tree at Woodland Springs. A true Elder of her line, this plum tree has created a secret Faerie grove. Her branches have dipped to the earth and sprouted roots and new growth. Her fruit has dropped on the ground, seeds have been buried, and daughter trees emerged, creating a thicket that is a village of trees. Blackberry brambles surround the tree village.

It took us two years to clear enough brambles to get close enough to the tree even to recognize it as a plum. When we finally arrived at the edge of the thicket, made a small clearing through the blackberries to let us enter the realm of the trees, we stepped into another world. We found mosses on all surfaces, ferns growing from trees, even a stream scurrying under leaning branches at the edge of the little grove.

And Fairies!!! We navigated under branches, over logs, around fern clumps and found our way to the base of the Grandmother tree, the original trunk that had birthed this magical place. There, tucked in mossy caverns and dangling from lichen ladders, were the Fairies for whom this grove was home. We had left offerings at the entrance but had saved special gifts for the central gathering place we had hoped to find. We placed small crystals, shells, and special stones in a hollow at the base of the tree, introduced ourselves, then lowered ourselves to the soft moss carpet, closed our eyes, and listened.

The Fairies ruffled the ferns, wove patterns in the breeze and whispered many things to us that day, including an invitation to come and visit as often as we liked. They also suggested we send a message on the winds when we plan to drop by to avoid frightening a plum snacking bear. We thought that sounded like a really good idea.

—Bridget Wolfe

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