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Into the Woods

Press play to listen to the forest as you read.

Welcome to the Wildwood, a magical forest where anything can happen.  Take a soft deep breath, and slowly let it go. Let’s do that again. Take a deep breath in, and slowly let it go. Feel your heart slow down. You can close your eyes if you want, and use your mind’s eye to picture your adventure. Do you see the trees, towering tall over head? Can you hear the soft rustle of the leaves as the wind tickles their branches. What about the soft tapping of the brush and grasses under the trees? 

“You’re here!” A friendly voice calls to you. You open your eyes to see your friend Addie running toward you, her curly red hair bouncing about in a loose bun. She’s wearing an outfit ready for adventure- a pants and tunic that remind you a little bit of a pirate. Her smile is catching and you find you’re smiling right back. You look down and realize you’re dressed similarly. The fabric is soft and comfortable. Your top is in your favorite color, and your pants a light brown. A pair of boots are on your feet. Your fingers tingle and your toes twitch as your excitement grows.

“What are we doing today?” You ask.

“Well! Today we’re just going to take a nice long walk.” She points to the path that’s right ahead of you. “It’s so nice and warm, isn’t it?” 

You feel the warmth of the sun on your face. You close your eyes and tip your head back just a bit. The suns rays make your eyes relax and feel soft. Your skin tingles a bit as it warms up. You take a deep breath and smell the towering pines. The air has another scent to it that’s sweet, and reminds you a bit of cinnamon. 

You open your eyes and Addie smiles. “Let’s go,” she says. The two of you walk in silence. But the woods are not silent. In addition to the rustling leaves, you hear the sounds of many different birds. Some make sharp little tweets, others complicated whistles and chirps.

You hear another sound that kind of sounds like a bird, but is a little different. “What is that?” You ask.

“That’s a squirrel!” She tells you. “It’s warning the other squirrels that something potentially dangerous is near by.” She laughs. “That would be us. Because we are super dangerous” You laugh with her. 

 

 

As you watch the path ahead you and the brush to the sides, your eyes find so many things to look at. There are tiny, bright orange mushrooms growing in the deep green moss on a fallen log. They remind you of little umbrellas and you wonder if a fairy would use them when it rains. Some moss is a lighter green and reminds you of a carpet, covering the rocks. It’s soft beneath your fingers as you brush over it as you walk by. You stop for a moment and look at it closely. The more you stare at it, you begin to imagine what it would be like to be so small that the moss looks like a jungle. How long would it take you to get from one end of the log to the other? Hours? A day?

You notice some trees have a flaky green texture growing up and around their trunks. It’s all shades of green with bits of white. Addie tells you it is called lichen. It looks like something you’d seen on an alien planet.

You walk a bit more in companionable silence, when Addie stops suddenly and points up ahead, where the path just starts to curve. “Look,” she says softly. It takes a moment, but then you see a little white ball of fluff twitch, and you realize it’s a small bunny. It sits up, still for a moment, before it jumps away into the brush. Addie reaches a hand out and brushes it along the bark of a tall, wide maple tree. “Sometimes it’s nice to stop and take a second to say a little thank you to the trees”.

You reach out and feel the rough bark beneath your fingers. The texture delights your fingertips and you wonder how old this tree must be. You try but can’t get your arms all the way around it. You look up and smile, seeing the bigger branches curve up toward the sky, almost like a hand reaching up for the sun. You suppose, that perhaps it really is doing just that. The deep green leaves and thinner branches sway back and forth with the slight breeze. The sound reminds you of a thousand drum symbols being brushed back and forth, back and forth. It’s making you a little bit sleepy.

You continue walking a bit further and after a time you realize you’ve looped right around through the woods, and are heading back to where you started. When you come to the end, Addie waves and smiles. “Thank you for coming with me today.”

“I’m glad I could come!” You reply waving back. 

“See you next time!” She grins and runs off down another path to your right. You smile knowing that you’re sure to explore that path another day.

At the Pond

Welcome to the Wildwood, a magical forest where anything can happen.  It’s a place to stop and relax for a bit. Take a soft deep breath, and slowly let it go. Let’s do that again. Take a deep breath in, and slowly let it go. Feel your heart slow down as you relax. You can close your eyes if you want, and use your mind’s eye to picture your adventure. Can you feel the warm of the sun on your face and arms? Do you feel the tall grass brushing against your finger tips? 

You open your eyes and find yourself standing on a path in a clearing in the woods. Tall grass, milkweed and wildflowers surround you. You stop for a minute to look at the flowers closely. Some are a light purple with yellow centers and lots of thin petals. Some you recognize as buttercups and you smile at the cheery sunny flowers. You take a deep breath and notice the air smells sweet.

  “Hi there!” A voice hollers to you. You look up to see Addie waving at you from just ahead. Her bright red hair shimmers in the sun. Her brother George runs up from behind her and waves too. Both are dressed in shorts and tee shirts, and you find you are too. It is a warm day and you’re glad for cool clothes. You walk up to them. George jumps around, his shaggy sandy blond hair flopping around. “We can’t wait to show you what’s at the pond!”

Addie takes your hand and you walk toward the direction they were coming from. The tall grass tickles at your hand. Small light blue butterflies flitter back and forth so quickly that they’re hard to see. They dance ahead of you on the path as if they’re leading the way. A bigger yellow and black butterfly joins them for a moment, then flies away again. They never seem to be still enough to get a good look at.

Up ahead you see that the path splits and you take the left fork. Up ahead you see a pond peeking out from behind even taller grass here. Addie and George stop and point. “Look,” they whisper and point. You look and see two Canadian geese waddling towards the pond. Then you see what it was that Addie really wanted to show you, six little goslings toddling in between their parents to get into the pond. Slowly you start to move towards them as they begin to swim out into the pond. You smile at how cute they are- just little yellow and gray fuzz balls, you think. They swim in between and around their parents, and then towards a rock at the center of the pond. “That’s where she lays her eggs each year,” George tells you in a soft voice.  You stop near the edge of the pond and sit on a nearby handmade wooden bench. “They just hatched a couple of days ago.”

 

 

Once they reach the rock, one of the bigger geese climbs up first, and the other stays in the water as the little ones climb up too. Sometimes they slip and slide back to the water, but eventually they all make it up to sit and rest, as the other goose continues to swim around the them. “We think that’s the dad, because he’s a little bit bigger and keeps an eye on everyone.”

The goslings all tuck in around the mama goose and start a morning nap. Together you get up from the bench and move closer to the edge of the pond when something jumps and splashes into the water. You jump and realize it was probably a frog. As you look along the water’s edge, you spy a green and brown frog sitting partly out of the water. You try to get closer for a better look and he jumps into the water too. Two more unseen frogs jump in from the grass at the water’s edge. You jump and giggle. You listen to the buzzing insects and chirps of different birds hidden up in the canopy of the trees. There are so many different sounds that its like the forest is making its own music. 

With a smile you rejoin Addie and George on the bench, and you sit in companionable silence for a while, listening and watching. Birds swoop back and forth among the trees, and occasionally you hear a rustling in the woods behind you, and you spy chipmunks and squirrels  running through the brush. The wind rustles the leaves and the water from the pond gently laps the shore. “We should go,” Addie whispers to you. “And let them rest.”

Together you walk quietly from the shore and a few minutes later you find yourself back where you started. “Thank you for showing me!” You say goodbye to your friends, knowing you’ll see them again soon.

In the Garden

Press play before reading!

Welcome to the Wildwood, a magical forest where anything can happen.  Take a soft deep breath in through your nose, and slowly let it go out your mouth. Let’s do that again. Take a deep breath in, and slowly let it go. Feel your heart slow down. You can close your eyes if you want, and use your mind’s eye to picture your adventure. Do you see the trees, towering tall over head? Can you hear the soft rustle of the leaves as the wind tickles their branches. Do you hear the birds chirping and the soft babble of a nearby creek?

You open your eyes and find yourself near a large garden. Towering sunflowers the edge of the garden to your left. They must be twice as tall as you are, and their faces are turned toward the sun. It is a beautiful summer day, and your bare arms delight in the warmth of the suns rays. As you smile at the cheery sunflowers you hear a shout greeting you hello. It is Addie and her brother George. “Today is harvest day!” She says smiling. “Well, the FIRST harvest day.”

“Yeah, the cherry tomatoes are finally ready,” George with a full mouth as he shows you a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes. His sandy blond hair shines in the sun. His beagle, Ace comes and greets you with happy whines and licks to your hands. You squat down to greet him with pets and belly rubs. His fur is spotted in some places, and covered in large patches of brown and black, most notably a large dot of brown at the top of his head in almost a perfect oval. His fun is sun warmed and his breath stinky you notice as he licks your face and you laugh.

“Would you like to help us? Mama’s promised sundaes when we’re done, and I know she’ll send you home with lots of goodies too!”

“I’d love to help,” you say. Addie hands you a basket and smiles. It’s a round wicker basket with a braided handle for easy carrying. The handle is smooth in your hands. She also hands you a big floppy hat made of straw. “This is to keep the sun off you”. You put the hat on your head and it’s a little bit big for you, but the shade feels nice. 

“Great! We’re in charge of tomatoes today.” Addie takes your free hand and leads you through waist high green bean plants, crawling vines of summer squash and zucchini. You remember how prickly the squash plants can be. Metal towers in cone shapes line one row where cucumbers are starting to climb them. Near the far edge of the garden is a long row of cherry tomatoes in all kinds of colors, red, yellow, orange and purple. Some grow in long strips on the plants, tomatoes lining either side of a long branch, others in bunches. Straw covers the dirt under the plants. Addie shows you how to pick the ripe ones (or almost ripe ones) and when to leave them on the vine. “If it doesn’t come off easily, it’s definitely not ready,” She grins. She hands you a yellow one to try. You pop it in your mouth and as you bite, the sweet-tart juices fill your mouth (and little bit spills out it’s so juicy). You giggle as you wipe the juice off your chin. Warmed just a little bit by the sun, it’s one of the best tomatoes you’ve ever had.

You hear a giggle and turn- George is holding out his hand, filled with deep brown dirt and the biggest wiggling worm you’ve ever seen. You grin and hold out your hand. George carefully tips the worm into your outstretched hand and the worm wiggles against your skin. The worm’s texture is sticky and rough. You place the worm under the tomato plant and it squirms away, finding some straw to bury itself under and keep cool.

As you pick tomatoes, George entertains you with silly jokes. “Have you heard the one about tomato that was riding a motorcycle? He was trying to KETCHUP with his friends!” He giggles and you do too. George tells you joke after joke until the ripe tomatoes are all off the vines and in your baskets.

“Well done everyone! Time to go inside, cool off and get sundaes!”  Addie and George’s mom smiles and grabs your basket. You help Addie carry hers and you follow them into the big white farm house.

The kitchen is warm with the summer sun. Open windows bring in a soft breeze and the smell of freshly cut grass. You remove your shoes inside the door and place them Addie and George’s shoes on a black rubber mat. As you cross the darkly stained hardwood floor, your toes enjoy the warmth of the floor where the sun has been hitting it this morning. Addie’s mom motions for you to join them at the kitchen table. It’s a long rectangle made from four wide wood boards. The surface is rough in texture, but has been smoothed with years of use and love. A placemat is set before you, and then a dish of vanilla ice cream. Addie’s mom brings over all the toppings- chocolate and caramel sauces, rainbow sprinkles, bright red cherries and whipped cream, and she helps you build the perfect sundae with your favorite toppings. The sweet coolness is the perfect ending to a warm, sunny afternoon. You leave a little while later with a full belly, a smile and a basket of tomatoes.