An Autumnretum at the Arboretum, Part Two: Pathways

All the pathways at the arboretum are magical!

Over a moss padded bridge to a magical land where everything is covered with moss. The houses are all moss, people wear clothes of moss, people fall asleep in beds of soft moss, and moss even grows tangled in people's beards. 

A spooky pathway past a haunted trees. Ghosts cling to the leaves and wrap themselves around the crooked branches. When people dare to take the path past the haunted trees, the ghosts swoop down and land on their shoulders or steal their hats and scarves. The people scream and run and run and run. The ghosts cackle and glow and feel relieved by their own weightlessness as they remember what it's like to be like the people who run away from them. 

Here is a pathway into a magical land of color and joy! If you were to keep going straight, you'd start to encounter trees with grinning faces and animals singing happy little ditties.

This way leads straight from Seattle to New England, where the world is calm and beautiful. No need to travel by train or by plane, just walk slowly down the path and suddenly you will be there. It's a path through a glitch in time, a path through a portal. It's a path that smells salty and rich like east coast sea. The path smells like maple syrup, thick sweaters and wild imaginings. 

Here's a pathway into a chapter from an old book. It's a book found squeezed between two shelves in the library, after clumsy fingers let it slip. It's a book with yellow pages stained with coffee and tea splatters. It's a book with characters you'll never forget, idea's that will change your life, descriptions that will insist all fiction is real.

This pathway leads to a land where all the animals talk. Just round that corner and you'll meet a bear who will invite you to tea. You'll meet a tiny mice who will offer you tiny bouquets of wildflowers and bow and say "good evening to you!" You'll meet deer who will whisper secrets to you about the things deer overhear when no one knows they are around.

Here is a path that skirts past a patch of trees made of real gold. Their leave glimmer and glisten of the most precious of precious metals. The witches of the woods use their golden leaves in spells and potions and other forms of alchemy. The ghosts of old miners drift up from their graves and steal a leaf or two to press against the spot where their hearts once beat. The forest fairies make gowns from the glimmering golden leaves.

Here is the road that connects the urban world to the wild world. Just look both ways before you cross, so you can enter that beautiful world of the wild where all around is the sound of the wind, the caw of the crows, the howl of a mighty beast. Sometimes while still in the urban world, you can hear that wild amalgamation of sounds mingling with the roar of the traffic, calling you underneath that steady roaring heart beat or urbanity. 

Who knew the arboretum was full of so many magical pathways!?