Moss Whispers

In the beginning, at least the beginning of my relationship to The Hillock, which was about 14 years ago, there were no visible roads or dwellings. The Hillock looked like every other mounded island that had grown from piles of rocks, debris and dirt and then covered over and over with leaves, vines and grasses. Bits of moss were grasping for air and moisture at the top of smaller mounds around the larger mounds. For some reason on my walks with the dogs, Sadie and Sophie our two black labs that moved to Thunder Mountain with us, I was particularly drawn to this particular hillock. I began to clear debris off of the pieces of mounded moss and the moss began to spread. I weeded and pulled up any vines that had been hiding magical spaces underneath. Some of those vines stayed with me for weeks on my skin as reactions to poison ivy! This still did not stop me for wanting to dig down to the magic.

Surprisingly, two things appeared there that enhanced the magic of the occasional frog, salamander and turtle that would allow me to invade their private community. The first was a gleaming fairy hanging and gliding underneath the dogwood tree. The second was a mysterious stone door with a fairy carved on the front of it. The sculptured door nestled naturally in the crook and crack of the giant oak tree in the middle of the hillock, atop a magnificent and spreading mound of moss, surrounding the tree! That’s all it took for me to sense they were signs of the magic that was to begin to unfold exponenientally all around me!

What until a few weeks before had seemed to be a chaotic endeavor on my part, and very unclear focus of my energies of weeding mosses and clearing leaves and vines, instantly became strong intentions to create a space where mysteries could reveal themselves.

That’s when the individual mounds began to grown into ‘hills and dales’ throughout The Hillock . And of course, there needed to be clear pathways to get from place to place. On my walks I began to bring a rock or two create a ledge beside a pathway or support for a log. As more and more dwellings and areas began to define themselves throughout the Hillock, it became clear that there would be much more traffic and Pebblestone Way, the ‘magnificent pebblestone street’ as Martha Julia Agnes Adele called it, began to grow.

The year that it began to grow I also was going through added pain and fatigue while I was being intensely treated for Lyme disease and the shifty shrewd spirochetes that were wrecking havoc in my body. These had been hidden and undiagnosed for over twenty years and it was was time to weed them out of my system. Each day I would still trudge down to the meadow with the dogsbut would only make it as far as the hillock when I would need to sit and rest. What could I do that would be productive when I felt so tired. One day I grabbed a tiny bucket and began filling it with small pebbles and took them to the Hillock. I would plop down on one of the pathways and begin to press the pebbles into the mud from the rainwashes they day before. Step by step each day and pebble by pebble the Pebblestone Way was paved and along with it was pressed out all my pain and fatigue.

Over its first year, Pebblestone Way became well trafficked and loved by animals, children, slugs. On a beautiful September day, Martha Julia Agnes Adele came upon this little hillock and ‘tripped and fell’. Thus began her adventure all around The Hillock. Now that her adventure is over, in spring of 2020, and she has found her shoe, it’s time to replenish the pebbles and upgrade the road system. And WHERE did all the pebbles go over those 7 years? Many were covered with leaves, dirt and moss, and many were scuffed down the hills and out into the meadow. So once again, Mossy gets out her little buckets and begins to carry a new supply of pebbles down to the Hillock.

It’s almost like building a city on top of an ancient city! Marbles, fairies, and other artifacts are showing themselves, all eager to bring new life to The Hillock of 2020!

The most wonderful thing about this ever-changing and growing hillock are the happy helpers that come to renew the infrastructure and more grandly to renew the spirit that give The Hillock its magic!