#Algy's winter adventure 2024

[adventuresofalgy]

As Algy rested on the wet grass, the mist grew denser and denser and denser and denser, until he could barely see beyond the end of his toes, and the woodland which had previously seemed to stretch away far beyond the horizon vanished entirely, except for a few ghostly tree trunks which loomed up out of the haze nearby.

But as the mist thickened and the daylight dimmed beneath its smothering grey blanket, the magical pumpkin started to glow ever more brightly, providing not only a most comforting light, but also a welcome warmth in the cold, damp air.

Suddenly Algy heard a familiar and unmistakable sort of voice. It was a robin, singing in some hidden tree nearby – although undoubtedly not the same wee friend that he knew in his assistants' garden, which was now lost in the mist somewhere far behind him.

Listening carefully, he picked out the words of the robin's reassuring song:

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you, If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven, No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.

[Algy is listening to the poem Lost by the 20th/early 21st century American poet David Wagoner.]