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Crying for vision, I step into the forest. Early twilight cloaks me, and mist cloaks everything else. A shiver stalks my spine. I feel something tread nearby with feet heavy as horses’ hooves, yet subtle and delicate as cloud. How it can be both I don’t know. Something breathes on my neck, though when I spin around I know nothing will show. Yet. I know I can freak myself out — I’ve done it lots of times. This is different. It is not fear, at least not fear as I know it. Instead it comes as joy and awe mixed, like the charge of touching the bark of a towering redwood a thousand years old, or the first glimpse of a landscape wholly remade by a night’s snow — beauty unlooked for, encounter with something awake and vital and ancient that I’m paying attention to at last.
How to explain it? Almost anyone listening would think I’m crazy, when all I can do is say “Look! Don’t you see them?!” as they dance and stalk and whirl themselves all around us both. And all the other person can do is shake his head at me, totally ignoring them as they gaze at him and size him up — perplexed, annoyed, amused, indifferent — depending on their natures. I shrug and turn back to them, watching, listening, enjoying and returning their welcome.
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Updated 23 April 2015
A Druid Way 