I Believe in Magic
By Christie McGraw, a story about the magical forest.
“Are we going to get to go into the magical forest today?”
As a farm guide at Bowers School Farm, I have been asked this question more than once. I can remember the first time I heard it. A few years ago, my son returned from camp at the farm and gleefully declared, “They took us into the magical forest today!!”
He was so proud and delighted. In his mind, he had been initiated into a wondrous club filled with twisting branches and lore.
The first time I opened the gate near the community gardens and stepped into the forest I immediately knew what he and all of the other children meant. That 5 acres of land holds a bit of enchantment in its sloping hills. The landscape at the center of the forest forms a sort of bowl that makes a person feel small like they are standing in the palm of a giant. The towering trees live as almost an island in the buzzing sea that is the farm proper. It has its own brand of ecosystem and breathes its own air. The smell of barns and dust fades away and makes room for bark and leaves. The air is cooler and the wind recedes. The bustling sounds of a working farm are replaced with rustling, creaking, crunching, and chirping.
Maybe the magic of this place also exists in the unexpected. It’s not uncommon to be in the woods and to see a herd of goats frolicking by. The goats thrive in the inclines that beckon to their genetic drive to climb and elevate. They spend their days chewing through buckthorn and other invasive species. They are caretakers, explorers, and visitors in this forest. To children though, they are tantamount to seeing a fairy fly by. They are a burst from another world.
Oftentimes, people think of magic as a spontaneous and sudden act. A moment of awe and wonder. In reality, it is the opposite. Magic has old bones. It has a long story to tell with many characters and storytellers pressed into its skin. The forest at Bowers is called an old growth forest. This means it has developed over a long period of time with little disturbance. Old growth forests have large down logs, broken trees, scars, resin flow, bark loss, and broken tree tops. Instead of separating from the dead, an old growth forest embraces it. It displays its more painful moments proudly. It is honest. It is the mixture of the past, present, and future. The fallen oak trees can still whisper their stories and loom as large as their swaying siblings. It is haunting and grounding all at once.
Side by side with the dead, life always finds a way. In the forest, Entoloma abortivum mushrooms gather in a network on the decaying logs and tree stumps and bring to them a new life, a new story, a new set of characters. Acorns adorn the leaf covered ground signaling the possibility of a sapling. Ancient Celtic cultures believed that all of life’s wisdom was contained in an acorn. They thought that oak trees were a portal to another world because the branches of the tree reached so far into the heavens. This belief in something powerful living in the trees has stuck with humanity for thousands of years.
When a child sees a forest as magical, a precious link between humans and nature clicks together. This bond is the greatest protection a forest will ever need. There is magic in seeing a tiny mittened hand filled with acorns. There is magic in rolling around in dry leaves for the first time in the fall. There is magic in snow falling from a tree branch and dusting a little wool hat with glittering white. There is magic in the privilege of becoming one very small moment of this forest’s story…in being initiated into this wondrous club filled with twisting branches and lore.
