This summer, Molly bravely carried us up a mountain - she may be slow, she may be old - but that ol’ gal has spirit. Sitting in leather bound chairs - we clattered, we creaked and we clonked up and down mountain paths - which, when you looked straight on - you wondered at the definition of passable. With a hope and wish and prayer to the fae - we came to rest next to an emerald tucked away, deep within the forest’s soul.

Ringed in aged pines, whose border is softened by the swicker and swish of tall grass - this lake holds the annals of the forest and its magic. The key to which, is in the silence.

Let me tell you about silence.

Silence has shape and a depth that resonates with story and is not only defined by its absence - but by what is created within its presence. Silence is everything and nothing at all, enveloping and revealing.

But this day…

This day, I perched on the banks surrounded by silence - an ephemeral hum calling to my bones of ancient and unchanging secrets. The forest holding its breath - waiting. The surface of the lake so still - that a flawless mirror could not compare, swallowing the edges of the lake and reflecting back something so inescapably serene. To touch would be to shatter the magic.

And then it started, softly at first, sporadic - yet insistent. The leaves and trees raising their voices - exclaiming in surprise as water softly tip-toed from one leaf to another. A hush fell as the surface of the lake suddenly bloomed in patterened rings, cascading into careful chaos.

Rain.

Lost in the symphony - I sat, frozen, camera in hand. The silence was deafening in its beauty and weight. The tap of droplets skipping from leaf to leaf serving as the beat for the soft susurration of water’s sighs. How could I even begin to capture this?

Suddenly, an assertive and slightly affronted vroom flitted into the song. Pausing for seconds, then, as though in question…. vvvroom?

Afraid to move, afraid to distrupt, I shifted my head and saw a tiny feathered body flitting to and fro - asking….vrrroom? Who are you?

I sat there - drenched by the drizzle, socks telling a mournful tale of muddy mud - camera still, and thanked the forest soul with all my heart - to be able to witness the magic woven by silence. Unlikely things always happen when you sit on the banks of a hidden and secret emerald - feet softly sinking into the giving mud. It is a hard thing to articulate - that softness of sound that surrounds you, the loudness of the quiet and the mummer of trees - softly whispering unknowable secrets amoung the boughs.

This, is magic.

A tiny mother sitting in a home woven from lichen and moss, warming two little secrets, against the tap tap and mutter of dripping skies.