The Fairy Tree
The Fairy Tree
How a tiny girl taught me to believe in Fairies
Let me introduce myself.
I’m an old man who didn't believe in fairies or much of anything else.
You might call me a curmudgeon.
So, you might ask, “what's a curmudgeon?”
Well, it's just a big word for a grumpy old man
Thankfully, I do believe in little children.
Little children have magical powers.
They can even melt the heart of a curmudgeon.
The story I have to tell you is true.
One mid-summer evening I happened to have some visitors.
It was a young Mommy, a young Daddy and their tiny 3-year-old girl.
Such a delightful family!
They smiled and laughed, and their little girl melted my heart.
So, I thought maybe they would like to see the sunset from the lookout point overlooking a deep canyon on our property.
I invited them to take a ride with me.
We enjoyed the sunset together.
The sky was painted in orange, crimson and gold.
The sunset seemed to light up just for the little girl.
I thought, “she really is magic.”
But then, no, “that's silly. You're just making that up in your head.”
That's just how curmudgeons think.
We watched the sun disappear behind the other side of the canyon.
The lights and the colors gradually began to fade, and the sky slowly became darker.
It was time to go home.
We got back into our little car and headed down the narrow dirt road.
As we rode, I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
At the bottom of a big oak tree was a hole.
I turned to the little girl and said, without thinking much about it, “do you know what lives inside that tree?”
She said simply, “No, what?”
Now, I was in a pickle. What should I tell her? Squirrels aren’t enough for a magical child.
Then, a magical thought popped into my head.
I’m pretty sure that thought must have come from the magical little girl.
“Well, that's where the fairies live. And if you sing real loud to them, sometimes they will come out and dance for you.”
“Really?” said she, with a big grin. “What should I sing?”
Well, that’s easy. “What do you know?” I asked.
She paused in thought for a long moment and finally blurted out,
“How about ‘Old McDonald’”?
Hmmm, I thought. “That doesn’t sound like a very magical song, but why not? After all, I knew no fairies would come out anyway.” I was just playing along.
Without hesitation, she began to sing,
“Old MacDonald had a farm, eeyai eeyai, Oh....
She sang so loud and so happily that I knew, if fairies were real, they couldn’t help but come out and dance.
But no fairies came out of the fairy tree. 😞
Now, I really was in a pickle. Here I am telling fibs to a little girl, and she will be heartbroken.
What shall I do now?
They say, if you tell a lie it will only get bigger when you try to cover it up.
And so, it did.
“Well, you know, fairies are very shy, and if they don't know a song, or how to dance to it, they might be embarrassed to do it wrong. Maybe we should just show them how to dance to that song.”
So, the four of us got out onto the dirt road.
We held hands.
We danced.
We kicked up our heels.
We turned in a circle.
and all four of us sang old MacDonald at the top of our lungs.
At that moment, something even more magical than the sunset happened.
The forest became just dark enough for the tiny lights of thousands of fairies to appear.
Suddenly there were dancing fairy lights everywhere.
I turned to her and said, “See? There they are.”
And just as suddenly, it began to rain.
The fairies had let us know that it was time to go, and that magic is only for a moment.
We scrambled back into the little car.
In that magic moment, it was as if the fairies had proven how silly a curmudgeon can be.
And.... how magical is a little girl with imagination and the courage to sing and dance.
So now, if only for a moment, I am not a curmudgeon.
Because I believe in Fairies, magic and children.
The fairy story doesn’t end there.
This is just the first chapter of a legend that is growing.
Since then, whenever I have visitors, old or tiny, I take them to the lookout.
I tell them the story of our discovery of the fairy tree.
They come back and tell me their stories and write them in the guest log books found in their tent or cabin.