The Enchanted Forest

Make good speed to the enchanted forest, where she hoped to find something worth her while, a golden ring, perhaps even a pair of glass slippers among the forest’s secrets. Like the Ardennes but more imaginative, mystical, magical, haunted, the home of all kinds of creatures, if she came across a frog and kissed it would it turn into a prince? She hoped on the other side lay a castle with buttresses and battlements and a drawbridge, along the way a house with a smoking chimney, inhabited by an old crone or gnome or an elf, an elf would be good she thought.

Weird lights, were not sprites, they turned out to be simply fireflies, eerie sounds were not eerie at all just child made windchimes, a Will-o‘-the-wisp drawing her from the safety of the dirt road turned out to be just ignited methane gas, there was no ogre hiding under a stone bridge to pass, no trolls.

The trees were still most of the time, they did not talk to her, the canopy floor did not offer any treasure of any kind, just all the usual things one would find on a forest canopy floor. No magic wand, no book of spells, no ginger bread house, no wishing well, no big bad wolf, but there was no grandma’s house, the only thing she saw was a forest mouse. No wizard, no orcs, no fiendish plan by some evil force to suppress the land. The alpine landscape is still in view, now behind her and halfway through the enchanted forest where she had come in the hope to find, a golden ring, perhaps even a pair of glass slippers, her prince, she found none of those. She did find with all its quiet and beautiful flowers, an enchanted forest.