Don’t do away with the fairies: we need to relearn our sense of the magical

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/fairies-fairy-doors-wayford-woods-somerset

Version 0 of 1.

If you go down to the woods today – at least in Somerset’s Wayford Woods – you are sure of a big surprise. It is not teddy bears this time, but uncontrolled immigration and house construction without planning permission – by fairies. More soberly, the trustees of Wayford Woods, near Crewkerne, are perplexed about what to do about the 200 or so tiny doors that have been screwed on to trees, and which purport to be entrances to the homes of the “little folk”. The 29-acre Somerset wood is accessible – legally as well as physically – and children have been leaving gifts and messages for the fairies for some years now, part of a wider trend for fairy doors.

So what exactly is the problem here? A few screws are not going to damage the trees; this is not ancient woodland or a site of special scientific interest; no wildlife is, so far as I can determine, being threatened. Environmental art (of widely varying degrees of merit) is now common, indeed encouraged, in woodland. We say we want children to get out into nature, to encourage the creative play of their imaginations; and I bet the little doors are increasing children’s “footfall”. In many ways indeed this is an appropriate place for such goings-on because the wood was originally part of the garden of Wayford Manor, designed by Harold Peto – a landscape architect of the Arts and Crafts movement, of which the fairytale revival was a central theme.

A fairy door I found in the woods. pic.twitter.com/kvlI4UzBhO

Some of the problem is, inevitably, about “good taste”. A spokesman for the Wayford Woods Charitable Trust – rather pleasingly named Steven Acreman – said that the first door, which appeared about 15 years ago, had “fitted perfectly, had a little turned handle, and inside was a bed”; but the newer installations were “more and more garish”, with plywood doors and “lots of tinsel and glittery stuff”. (We know that primary-school-age human beings are keener on “glittery stuff” than older ones; but we have no idea at all about the aesthetic sensibilities of fairies.)

And some of the problem is about “control” – these doors apparently are encouraging people to leave the paths, and a “free-for-all” – which is, apparently, a bad thing – is developing.

More interesting to me is the fact that Mr Acreman also feels a need to stress that: “We’re not anti-fairies.” Why not? It’s arguable that fairies have poor taste, encourage deviance from pathways, and don’t even exist: three good reasons (and I can think of more) for being firmly anti-fairies. Richard Dawkins, for example, has been accused of condemning the reading of fairy stories to children, so dangerous is a belief in the supernatural to young minds.

But I suspect that Mr Acreman and his colleagues are more sensitive, if not wiser, here. And I like to hope, or even think, this may well be because they actually spend time in these woods.

Related: Do you know the names of the trees in your neighbourhood? | Sara Maitland

Woods are magical. Throughout northern Europe they are deeply linked to older ways of being, to what we might now like to dismiss as superstitious, childish nonsense.

But we cannot so simply wipe this out. Woods are our original home. If we do not populate the woods with imagination, with stories, with wonders, we will destroy them, or limit our own flourishing – or both.

I believe that most of us have a deep yearning for the magical, for a secret “otherness”, for an environment flowing with abundance – not just with nature but with super-nature too; with a rich background of stories and concepts and images, to inform our individual imaginations and give them actual material to come to grips with.

We know that our children are growing up richer and safer, less likely to die in childhood than ever. We also know that they (and their grownups ) have increasingly poor mental health, with higher levels of depression, anxiety, attention deficit problems and eating disorders. There are lots of reasons for this, of course; it is complex and complicated. But in 2012 a survey suggested that more than half of Icelanders believe in, or at least entertain the possibility of the existence of, the huldufólk – the hidden people, the elves. Iceland ranks well above the UK in social stability, equality and most noticeably happiness (ninth in the world, compared with our 22nd). Is it possible that there is a connection? And would we lose anything by assuming that there might be?

I would urge Mr Acreman and his colleagues to trust the part of their psyches that is not “anti-fairy”. The fashion for sneakily putting up doors will pass; the garishness will fade in the damp woodland air; the plywood will rot away; the skilfully made doors will last a little longer, fitting in ever more perfectly as they are weathered by moss and insects.

And at least a few children will become adults who wonder (in both senses of the word) what is going on in the woods today, and are the happier for it.