The delicate fairy, the feisty cat, and the devious fisherman were waiting for me at the other side of the field. The fairy leapt nimbly about screaming with giddy delight. She left perfect prints in the snow as I scuffled along behind. Ahead I heard a gasp as one of the fisherman’s snow balls made its mark. When I finally reached the road I glanced up to see the fisherman duck and dive toward the snow as the fairy and the cat rushed forward in an attempt to make an icy end to his scheming.
We four were dressed like a wandering fairytale. We wore bright colored scarves, hats, gloves, layers and layer of clothes under our coats. Each of us filled a role in the grand adventure tale; the fairy, the cat, the fisherman, and the gimp.
My companions hopped over fences and briars as I clumsily stumbled over them. The woods were filled with snow laden evergreens and old dead trees suddenly made alive by the magic of winter white. We wandered on through brambles, rocks, and fallen log bridges. With each changing scene we stepped through yet another picture frame.
We were going somewhere, none of us knew it, but we were. We were on an exciting journey. Each of us needed to reach where ever it was we were going. It was a desperate mission. If we were all younger, perhaps we would have known where it was we were going. But something breaks when you grow up; you loose the ability to discuss your grand adventures with your companions in the proper vocabulary. So the story remains half told.
Along a turn in the river the fisherman build a small fire. He carefully coddled it to life. Sweet smoke blew across the rock and our faces. We didn’t turn away. It was the sweet smoke that you wish to smell deeper. The sparks danced into the twilight like fireflies. They flew along with the smoke whispering their secret messages. It was there that we four would spend the night. Curled up beneath an outcropping of rock, the fairy, the cat, and the gimp curled into a ball under a thin blanket that would soon be insulated by snow. The fisherman would sit by the fire, watching the river roll by, carefully making sure it never went out.
As the daylight began to slip away we were forced leave our fairytale adventure. The elfin sized fire shown like a lighthouse as we rambled back into the forest. The trees reached out for us, to hold us a bit longer in their spell. We, I think, longed for them to seize us; to save us from returning to adult life.
Through the tall weeds, the prickly vines, a precarious leap over the stream, and a final scramble up the embankment lead us to the road. So we leapt, or danced, or sauntered, or limped our way home.
Today, the snow came. Now curled up on my couch with lebkuchen and a soy steamer, my friends sprawled out in various locations around my living room, I wish the snow could come everyday.
