Day before yesterday, I walked far into the forest at Warner Park. It was still summer there. I began my walk off the road and climbed until I found a doe in a clearing, and she spoke a poem to me. Then I went to the road and as long as I climbed, no matter how many curves I went around, I was alone. It was twilight, and part of me said it was foolish to walk alone. But part was certain it was all right. The forest there reminds me of the Dandenongs in Australia, minus the fern trees. I can never believe it is Nashville.

No matter when you drive into the Dandenongs, it is always green and cool; it is always twilight and the trees nearly meet across the winding road. The last time I was there, I took Shannon with me. She was three at the time, and, on the way, she told me a story about a Dandenong girl and how she was searching for her father. We went to the place that galahs (pink and white) and all colors of parakeets (they call them budgies) fly and land on your shoulders and arms and head, if you let them.

Shannon was afraid, so I took her on to a fairly short trail where the limbs of trees always drip with water, but not enough to annoy you. The trail is crossed by fallen logs and at several points there are hollowed trunks of eucalypts, upright and not, that even adults can crawl into. All the way, Shannon insisted that we call for the Dandenong girl, that we call for her father. So we did, and our voices echoed in the forest, and our breath fogged before us. Somewhere, tantalizingly near, we heard both lyrebirds and bell bird, rare sounds in the wild these days. And where the trail emerges, there is an old kookaburra near a picnic ground who will let you get pretty close before he removes himself to safety. Through it all, except when calling, "Where are you, Dandenong girl?" or "Where are you, father?" Shannon spoke in whispers. It was a day of magic and reverence. I asked her parents where she heard the story of the Dandenong girl; they said they'd never heard of it before. But Shannon remembers.

As long as I climbed into the trees the other day, the forest gave me its magic: the scent of my childhood, sun breaking through leaves, birds to make the quiet more so. I discovered through a cleft in the leaves a clearing, a bower, completely encircled in delicate white flowers, where the trees dipped to shelter the fairies who surely would dance there in a few minutes' time. A place where the grass was still green and thick, large enough for one person, perhaps two. But as soon as I turned, knowing I had to return, down, down, to the highway where the golfers were driving balls in open space, people came along. I heard a man's voice around the curve and jumped, but he said something about "endowment and the size of our student body" and I knew I was safe. After he and his friend passed, I met more and more people: cyclists, a large group of joggers, a woman in very short red silk shorts, a couple walking a dog.

The forest said go home; night will soon be here. And our own version of the Dandenong girl found her father, I am sure. They are in the clearing now, with the boughs drawn close about them.
posted by Sandy at 5:01 PM