Today, on International Day of Forests, I'm thinking of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. I think it's truly one of the most beautiful books ever written (and I've read a lot of books). Her descriptions have stuck with me since I first read the book in Mrs. Rubello's fifth grade class.
Right now - even though I tend to be drawn to cities - the pull of the magic of the forest is there.
Babbitt's description of the wood has stuck with me, and I think I've been searching since then for a forest that lives up to her description. From Sherwood Forest in England the the Black Forest in Germany - there are truly otherworldly forests on the earth.
"But the wood had a sleeping, otherworld appearance that made you want to speak in whispers."
“For, through the twilight sounds of crickets and sighing trees, a faint, surprising wisp of music came floating to them and all three turned toward it, toward the wood.”
"“For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.”
"The people would have noticed the giant ash tree at the center of the wood, and then, in time, they’d have noticed the little spring bubbling up among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to conceal it. And that would have been a disaster so immense that this weary old earth, owned or not to its fiery core, would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin."
Here's hoping that we can all find a place to appreciate and enjoy the serenity of the forest.
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