My Visit to the Otherworld

Good afternoon.  Wow, am I late!   Been busy here at work for most of the day.   Trying to play catch up on all I missed last week when I was sick.   Several of you asked about my Otherworld adventure so I figured I would share it with you today. As most of you know, I wasn't always a city girl.  I was born and raised in the country.  For the first five years we lived at my grandparents home, and then my parents bought their first house...it was in one of those little cookie cutter neighborhoods that were so common back then...You know the type...all the houses look alike, but were all in different colors.  It was almost like someone took a huge bowl and placed it over some woodlands, cut out all the trees, and then built the houses.

So, I spent five days a week in my cookie cutter neighborhood and Saturday and Sunday I spent with my grandparents.  I loved being at my grandparents' home.  They lived in a small neighborhood atop a hill.  At the foot of the hill, there was a forest...not a great forest, but big enough for a child to have fun in...and when I wasn't riding my broom, I was exploring in the woods.  It was one of those warm, lazy days of summer...a beautiful day.  The sun was shining brilliantly as I walked along the narrow pathway.  I'd been walking for awhile when I suddenly stumbled into  a clearing.  In the middle of the clearing was a pond with water as blue as the sky.  Strangely, as many times as I had traversed these woods, I had never come across this before.  

I slowly moved into the clearing and gazed about the landscape.  Although  a child, I knew I had stumbled across a special, mystical place. I had never seen such beauty before.  The pond itself was surrounded by the greenest field I had ever seen.  It was teeming with a colorful array of wildflowers in every shade of the rainbow.  There was such a sweet aroma from the wildflowers, and there was  the cheerful singing of the birds in the trees.  I moved closer to the pond and kicked off my shoes; I sat on a rock at the edge and let my feet dangle into the cool, refreshing water.  I could see the reflection of the tree's on the water's surface...a gentle wind blowing ripples in the water.  I leaned back then and closed my eyes.  Flashes of light were flickering across my eyelids.  Was it the sun or were the fairies dancing around me?  I didn't sleep, but when I re-opened my eyes, darkness was already setting in.  I tore myself away and scurried home.

The next day I was so anxious to get back there that I barely chewed my breakfast before racing off into the woods to return to my special place...but, I was never able to find it again.  It was as if it had suddenly vanished...or it had never ever really existed in the physical world.  Later, when they cleared the woods for housing, the little pond was nowhere to be found.  That was over fifty years ago and I can still close my eyes and see it...just as if I it were only yesterday.  I know I had somehow crossed through the mist and ventured into a world that few get to see.