Into the Woods

“It’s the good old bedtime stories, give you nightmares ’til you die.”

from Brandi Carlile’s The Stranger at My Door

The best fairy tales are the most horrible—those grim, bloody stories with dark woodlands and castles in wild places. There are no monsters and there is no magic, but there is a pervasive sense of enchantment. The luminous resilience of the young heroes and heroines glows through the darkest of places, rendering the tales at once disturbing and beautiful.

There are places like that, too. This woodland was set on a steep hill in the Great Glen, south of Loch Ness. Silent and so thick with moss you could sleep on it, at times deeply shaded, at others dappled with light. I wandered, lost, through the trees, until I found my way home again.

Do you have a favorite story?