Fairy Sue's in love with The Land

I've never met someone in love with a piece of land. But the way fairy Sue talks about her property in Hocking Hills is like someone talking about her child, or her husband. 'The Land' as she refers to it, is a character in her life. Like a long-distance lover who's rarely in the room, she talks about the gorge, the grassy hill, and the campground where she pitches her tent with all the dreaminess, excitement, and tenderness of a first crush.

Although she's given the land a feminine name - Melethwyn - I think of it as much more male. He's even got faults - swathes of poison ivy and hordes of ticks, particularly in the spring and late summer. He's got his inaccessible places, and the places where she loves to lie - for instance the big, flat mossy rocks by the stream where she puts herself flat on her back and wriggles, working out the knots and kinks. Or the downed beech tree across the river bed, a place to shuck shoes and play high-wire artiste, a sunny patch in the forest canopy for staring up at twilight to the emerging big dipper.

She's jealous of him too, and careful which friends she lets in on this great love. It's an honour to be invited by Fairy Sue to take the hour-and-a-half trek down to The Land, and test your SUV's 4-wheel capabilities through hood-high grasses, down a steep grade, onto a track marked only by a slight deepening of green which only Fairy Sue seems to be able to see. She's broken an axle against The Land, and on our last trip her uncomplaining Toyota had to sit it out at the shop with a mysterious oil leak, probably concocted by the Toyota's uberangel when she started throwing camping gear in the back.

I enjoy The Land, in the way that I enjoy talking to a handsome and amusing married man at a party. That is, I'm as happy to wave goodbye to him as I am to see him again, and happy that my friend is so ensconced in her love. She doesn't need much when she's on The Land - her plastic jerry-cans of water, tp, some food. She sits for hours on The Land with her two Jack Russels, drawing magical creatures, and seeing magic in all the happenings - from the hooting of a barred owl, to the deer trekking through, to the birds calling through camp. It's all For A Reason, and part of the magic of a lover so strong as The Land.