fairytale forest

Being some hundred metres in a naturally grown forest and away from the path, I sometimes feel like I understand how and where all the fairytales and stories about fairies and dwarfs have come from. Do you know what I mean?

A forest can have something magical 

– a silence that most of the time is no silence at all, but a constant murmuring, rustling trees, rushing wind and singing birds. There's light that reaches the ground only filtered through 

a roof of branches and green leaves. A ground that is covered with the most varied parts of plants: layers of dry leaves, bushes and herbs, old dead trees and younger branches among stones, earth and small brooks and ponds. Being in a forest creates the most different feelings in humans, depending on their situation, company and of course, season and hour. You simply cannot compare the same woods in spring, summer, fall and winter! Some people relax when walking through the forest, some get frightened - especially in the night - or feel utterly lonely. You can get – or simply feel - really lost in a forest.

Some feel a secrecy like in a hidden place – why else would a faraway meadow in the forest be 

a major motive for a romantic place? I think the feeling that the forest will always keep some secrets you will never get into, has inspired people throughout the centuries to the stories about fable creatures who live in the woods. At the same time they tried to tame nature, to make maps, paths and roads, to cut or burn it down and replant it.

But a forest which got so thouroughly combed that no secrets and hidden places remain would 

be a park. And who won't agree that the atmosphere in a park is always different? I think it cannot be compared with the feeling you get while straying through a 'genuine' forest.

Some people also feel quite small in the great woods and see the greatness of its creator. 

And a single picture can impossibly describe the diversity of the different forests with their atmospheres – winter, summer, spring, autumn, dusk, daylight, dawn, night... - one gets to know here in Germany, let alone around the world!

You don't have to be a freak of nature (which I'm most positively not! Being outside can be so ...uncomfortable ;) to enjoy the charme of the woods. Whether you go there alone or with a friend, take a look around yourself: Although I cannot promise you to see a fairy or any spectacular animal you might anyway catch that fairytale-feeling too.