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I come in from pulling weeds and hear my husband and daughter rustling around in the bottom of her toy box, voices muffled by stuffies and building blocks.

“Find an animal we can leave in the magic forest,” my husband says.

My daughter proudly procures an ugly plastic brown Apatosaurus, approximately the size of my gall bladder.

“Daddy, look at my animal! A die sore!”

I see his plan. Almost every weekend we go walking in North Vancouver and there’s a little spot off one of the beaten trails where something magical has occurred. It started, from my recollection, with a few stones the shape and size of eagle eggs being lovingly cradled in a decaying trunk. Then someone nestled a wrought iron bird beside it and nailed a horseshoe to the tree. Over the months, small painted wooden creatures and ceramic gnomes started to appear in the nooks and crannies around it, slightly hidden. It was something organic and delightful that grew out of one person’s vision, igniting a community’s quiet collective imagination. But like my daughter’s dinosaur, tackier plastic offending articles started to show themselves: waving from knots like a Disney float, leaching toxins while squatting on the moss, rubbing their “made in Malaysia” keesters on newborn ferns.

I’m horrified at the thought of polluting the environment with our plastic Jurassic offering. What is my husband thinking?

Oh, then of course the mental list tumbles…this is the man who leaves the tap running while he brushes his teeth, the man who doesn’t shred and recycle his office papers, the man who pours paint thinner in my herb garden! Of course he doesn’t even think about leaving a non-biodegradable cancer causing Chinese slave labor product in a protected land area!

The whole situation reminds me of the Illuminares Lantern Procession in Vancouver. Hand crafted candle lit paper lanterns started to be upstaged with fair concessions, battery charged flagships, smashed beer bottles under the feet of toddler fairies and glow sticks on potheads clogging up the footpath with their “wow man” wonder. Though it was still fun, it started to gain a seedy carnival underbelly. Humans. We sully everything.

My daughter runs up and hugs my legs, waving her wrinkled phallic Darwinian prize in my face. “Mommy, mommy, wanna come put die sore in the woods?” Such joy in her eyes. Such guileless “I am a good Daddy” hope in my husband’s dear face. I decide not to get pissy. “What’s one little dinosaur in a world full of land fills?” I suck up my self righteousness and feign delight.

We drive up to the trails and indeed, tip toe through the magic forest. My daughter is breathless with delight as my husband lifts her up to see the white goose, the strawberry fairy, the sleepy elf, the raku mask hearkening back to the eighties…

Then, after much pondering, she carefully places ol’ long neck underneath a raised tree root. For a dun Willy who looks like he’s smoked three packs a day for his entire life…given the gorgeous lighting and the proper back drop, he actually looks…beautiful. A real Royal Tyrrell Museum masterpiece.

I think of snatching him back when my girl isn’t looking, but then I figure, “He’s not going anywhere. That wrinkled winker is going to last until the next Ice Age. I’ll retrieve him when the forest is no longer magic for my baby.”

As we walk along I deal with my guilt by reminding myself of all the good things I’ve taught my daughter. We clean up other people’s litter every time we go to the park. We recycle Avalon milk bottles. We turn off the lights. I have explained what the “blue box” is for. We only use a little bit of water on our toothbrush and not too much soap in the laundry…eventually this must sink in…this respect for the planet.

My daughter patters along the forest path, still bending down to look for magic under logs, peering through the treacherous blackberry bushes, gazing all the way up the tall majestic Douglas firs…

“I think the magic part is done, honey.”

She stops suddenly in front her, squats down in front of a fallen tree and gasps with wonder, “Mommy, Daddy, look!”

We do.

“There’s nothing there, love.”

She shakes her head and points and giggles with joy. “Magic!”

I look again. There’s a branch leaning artfully against tangled roots, a sprig of green growth, a ring of lime green moss…it really is…beautiful.

My husband leans down.

“Did somebody put something there?”

I see from my daughter’s face, indeed Someone did.

. . . . . . .

Photo courtesy of ((brian))