New England Magic
I’m not one for humidity, but it is hard not to fall in love with murky bogs and fireflies hovering amid ancient trees. Life is simply more dense here, and makes for a critical mass that allows magic to seem much more plausible. Life, piled upon life, accreting like layers of soil. Even the darkness seems thicker than in the West, a thing alive.
Faeries?
Absolutely.
Trolls?
Down by the swamp, atop the log with the toadstool.
Mind the children. ;)
“But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then–ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake."
An excerpt from
THE LAKE. TO --
by Edgar Allan Poe,
1827
3 comments:
It's interesting how some areas seem so much more magic-intensive than others. Parts of Scotland and Ireland struck me as being chock-full of it.
As for fireflies, at this time of year I miss living in Maryland. I've never seen fireflies that size anywhere else, or so many of them. They'd start the evening down close to the grass, then by 10:00 or so they'd settled into the trees, so thick that at times the row of cedars on one side of our yard looked like Christmas trees. :)
I don't know, Grimmy...there are places seldom touched by man in the Rockies where the darkness and the magic are thick as honey...how else could a kid born and raised in rural Montana grow up to be a fantasy writer? ;)
Hmmm....good point, Marce.
Maybe it is a quality of heat and moisture, sort of a (and I mean this in a positive way) compost heap of magic?
Heh. Never live that one down.
//H
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