Forest Defender

This is one of my more "whimsical drawings." As a youngster I loved and dearly enjoyed all fairytales, myths and legends. Coupled with a big imagination, I would often make up stories about the lives of the faery folk I imagined living in the forest. I was the staunch and brave defender of the woodland!
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The forest near where I grew up is beautiful. There is a small canyon, complete with tall trees, and a rippling, singing brook. In these magical woods grow snowdrops, pungent skunk cabbage, star flowers, vine maple and fiddle fern. The moss grows thick beneath fragrant fir and cedar trees, where vast bunches of green sword fern grow unrestrained. A few years ago, we found ferns growing near the creek, with fronds more than six feet in length!
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As children, my brothers, sisters, cousins and I played in Leprechaun Valley and Deer Valley. There were beautiful places we named Bambi's meadow, Reflection Lake, Castle Stump and Fairy Wing Pond. We would follow the distinct trails of the deer into thickets of low growth beneath the cedar trees. There we would find green-walled rooms, complete with lush moss carpeting. I remember the loveliness of delicate maiden hair fern and the rare find of an Indian Peace Pipe plant.
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I recall long summer days spent exploring, building forts and tree houses, eating blackberries from vines covering the steep hillsides, and red huckleberries from "Huckleberry Bridge." I can retrace wading in the cool stream and the way the soft mud felt when we would sink our feet deep into the Mud Flats formed by natural springs bubbling up from the rich brown earth.
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On this cold winter day, if I think hard enough, I can still smell the fragrance of the cedar trees and feel the green coolness of the forest on a hot summer day. I hear the stillness of the woods, spiked with bird calls, the creek's song and the crackling of underbrush beneath my bare feet.