Once upon some fairy stones…

Remember this scene. What do you see? A log? One lone rock? No strange formations in the lake?

Once upon a time can happen every day.  It does happen every day.

How often are we rushing too blindly through our moments and hours to pause and watch the magic reveal itself?

A solitary stone surveys the waves, the distant horizon

How often do we spend our time thinking, thinking, thinking, round and round and round, going nowhere, trying to figure things out?

Ancient curving meandering slab of rock near shore. Formed from the endless sweeping of waves and glacier ice?

How often do we just sit and look–sit and be–wandering along a lake, pausing in a forest?

Looking down at curving rock formations

 If you listen hard, you’ll sometimes hear the magic, like giggling fairies, in the distance. 

Like the other night, when I was walking along the lake–I heard–

Anyone else see the Buddha rock? It's been meditating by the lake for eons.

I think I heard–

See the buttercup? They've only been meditating by the lake since June. The rocks call them "babies."

The sound of laughter.  Children’s laughter.  Back at the beginning.  Near the long beached white log on the shore.

The waves keep dashing against the rocks, over and over, summer after summer, century after century

Always sit and listen to children’s laughter.  It will bring a smile to the hardest and saddest of faces. Their laughter can melt a grieving heart, a suffering spirit.

The lake is so blue.

Suddenly, as simply and quickly as it arose, the laughter disappears.  The children are gone. 

No sign of them anywhere.

Hark! What is that, through yonder trees? What sits upon the ancient curved rock, out amidst the waves?

Was it really the laughter of children–or was it perhaps a visit from the wee ones, the invisible ones, the fairies?

What manner of cairn is this?

Look!  There, back at the beginning, lies a pile of stacked rocks leading from earth to sky!  One sits out in the water, how many stones high?  Another rises from the beached log, maybe fifteen precarious stones high, an engineering feat, a marvel of spirit.

And a second delicately piled rock structure--atop the log (see first photo) upon which only a lone stone surveyed the lake.

No sign of children.  No sign of cars.  No sign anywhere.  It is a hushed evening, an evening of possibility, an evening where summer fairies might just laugh open some deserted rocky beach, and build cairns to celebrate their eternal joy.

It's magic, I tell you!

I think it was the fairies.  Don’t you?