Something magical happened today

***Post written Thursday, July 12th 2012***

Okay everybody, this is the moment we've all been waiting for.

At least, its the moment I've been waiting for.

And it was purely magical.

Magical beyond words.

Magical beyond belief.

Magical beyond imagination.

Life has taught me that sometimes the more excited you are about something, the more likely you are to be let down.

My day in Ashdown Forest, better known as Pooh Forest and The Hundred Acre Woods, completely threw that theory out the window. It may sound as though I'm being dramatic and over the top, but I am absolutely not when I say that today was more perfect than I could have ever hoped it would be.

As I just told my professor in an email, I could probably still taste the salt from the tears of joy dried onto my cheeks if my tongue were long enough to reach them ;)

The day began with our class boarding a bus at 8:00a.m. The sun was shining, a cool wind was blowing... and I thought to myself it is most DEFINITELY going to rain today, because this is how every rainy day begins!

Fortunately, the weather moves across England from the West to the East and we were going further East, so we escaped the rain and let the sunshine accompany us for the entire morning.

So the world glittered with sunlight, we were driving in a cozy coach (better known to Americans as a charter bus) out of London and into the English countryside, and our professor popped in the Lord of the Rings movie The Return of the King.

Can it GET anymore perfect?!

 I think not.

I sat with The House at Pooh Corner book in my lap and would read a chapter out of it as the LOTR soundtrack played in the background, then I would look up to see what was going on in the movie, and then I would glance out the window at the bright green fields and forests of trees basking in the sunlight, thinking to myself that I could stay on the coach for the rest of my life and would be perfectly content. 

But then we made it to Ashdown Forest, and as we wound up the streets trimmed by a gloriously beautiful forest I changed my mind.

Now I couldn't wait to jump out of the coach and go leaping through the woods!

Well, Jolene and I did just that when the coach pulled into a gravel parking lot at the top of a hill overlooking the English countryside. We tripped down the stairs into the open air and beaming sunshine, and this is what happened:

Me: "I just feel like running. I don't even know where, any direction really, I just want to RUN!"

Jolene: "You know, I kind of do too."

Me and Jolene: "Let's go!"

And we literally went bounding off into a tall field of grass straight ahead of us, laughing hysterically as the tall, wet wheat stalks brushed against our legs and we tried to avoid landing in a puddle. At the end of our bounding we beheld an astounding sight. The whole world stretched before us (as Christopher Robin himself describes in in The House at Pooh Corner), and from the edge of our hill we could see the country side for miles.

...It was amazing. That's really all I can say. Absolutely amazing.

We ran back to the coach pretending we had never run off at all as the rest of our class was disembarking. There our speaker Ann Thwaite, the famous biographer of A.A. Milne, was introduced to us and then with our boot laces securely tied we followed her into The Hundred Acre Wood.

I. Walked into The Hundred Acre Wood.

I was really there.

And my heart was filled to the brim with joy as I was swept out of reality by the tidal wave of nostalgia. 

The real Christopher Robin played where I was standing. And as for Pooh Bear, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo...well, literature has immortalized them. So they're still out there somewhere playing their lazy summer days away :)

I walked on the soft bed of pine needles beneath the canopy of the Hundred Acre Woods, I carefully ran my fingers through the gorse bush Pooh fell into when he was trying to get honey from the bees, I picked up the fir cones that Roo and Tigger had thrown at each other in play when they were supposed to be picking them up for Kanga, and then...then I walked into the Enchanted Place.

The Enchanted Place is a real place in Milne's novel, and it appears at the end of The House at Pooh Corner when all of the animals are saying goodbye to Christopher Robin. As Milne describes this place in the book when Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin come upon it:

 "It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for somewhere else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap."

Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen.

And while these pictures hardly do it justice...

 It was every bit as enchanted today as it would have been to Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear all those years ago.

So we sat in a circle on the ground, with Dr. Thwaite on a stone with her books surrounding her, and learned about the life of A.A. Milne.

And all the while, this was our view.

Pure. Magic.

After our experience in the Enchanted Place we continued our march through the woods towards Pooh Bridge.

Markers along the way let us know we were getting closer and closer...

And then we were there, playing Pooh Sticks on Pooh Bridge, right where Christopher Robin had all those years ago.

I kept an eye out for Eeyore floating in circles down the river, but I guess Tigger controlled himself today and didn't bounce him in ;)

 After we had all raced our sticks time and time again, we made our way out of Ashdown Forest and towards A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin's house.

As we were making our way out of the forest I really didn't want to leave. I kept wishing it would go on forever and ever and I would never have to walk out!

But at least it will always be there, and it looks today just like it did in E.H. Shepherd's illustrations. And as Milne says at the close of his novel The House at Pooh Corner,

"...in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing."

Reading those words made me cry buckets on the drive home, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Once we had peeked through the gate to see what little we could of Christopher Robin's house our coach picked us up on the road and drove us into Hartfield. In this quaint English town we ate at a charming little restaurant called The Anchor. It really was one of those low ceiling, hardwood floor country pubs that usually only show up in television shows, and it was filled with shelves of old books so it smelled like a well-worn library.  Ann Thwaite and her renowned poet husband Anthony Twaite joined us for lunch, and I enjoyed a delicious plate of pork loin marinated in honey on a bed of warm cous cous! 

After everyone had paid we went trotting down the street to Pooh Corner; the name of the actual store in Hartfield where Christopher Robin used to shop for candy! We all loaded up with Pooh memorabilia and then the time had come for us to leave Hartfield and Ashdown Forest behind us.

For the coach ride home the sky had turned gray and rain sprinkled down onto the countryside. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon when we left, and once again I had The Return of the King playing on the TV screen, The House at Pooh Corner in my lap, and the fields and forests of England right outside my window. Because I was saying farewell to the Hundred Acre Woods I skipped to the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner where all the friends are saying goodbye to Christopher Robin. I hadn't actually re-read this chapter yet before going into Ashdown Forest, but once I started reading it and read the description of the Enchanted Place and saw E.H. Shepherd's perfect illustration of it I started to cry. I had just been in the Enchanted Place without fully realizing what it was, but once the realization hit me it hit me hard.

I don't know why I'm such an emotional wreck 99.9% of the time. Sometimes though, the joy is so much it has to flow out somehow.

Of course I'm simultaneously watching the last part of LOTR, and for anyone who has ever seen that movie its a cry-fest from the moment Sam and Frodo start climbing up Mount Doom all the way up to the end of the credits when Howard Shore's song Into the West, sung by Annie Lennox, rings its last note. 

I cried when Sam carried Frodo, when Merry and Pippin ran out in front of the army towards the gates of Mordor, when the Ring was finally destroyed, when the Fellowship thought Frodo had died because of Mount Doom's explosion, when the eagles rescued Sam and Frodo, when Frodo woke up, and most of all...when all the Hobbits said goodbye at the end and Frodo went sailing into the West. I cried because, when I looked out the window, I realized I was in the Shire; I was in the land the Shire had been based off of. I cried because the story is so happy, yet so sad, and because friendship is so beautiful and because its so hard to say goodbye. I cried because my childhood was sitting in my lap and emanating throughout the entire coach in the form of a beloved book and movie, and I cried because one of my greatest dreams had just come true and it was over in the blink of an eye.

In other words, tears were rolling down my cheeks the whole way home, and this is no exaggeration or my name isn't Michelle Holowach (which it is, and THAT is a Winnie the Pooh-ish quote ;D)

I've heard that crying is good for you though, and its a good thing because I certainly did my part in contributing to the world's supply of salt water. But I'm also glad that the people next to me and behind me were asleep, because tears like those are the best if you can keep them to yourself.

When we arrived back to our Stamford Street apartments I got dressed up and went out with Jolene and Tanja to a nearby, cozy English pub where men wear suits and women wear dresses and there are big brown, leather couches to swallow you up. We played Scrabble, talked about everything under the sun, enjoyed a couple of fruity drinks and a bowl of ice cream. Later in the evening Cecily, Ellie, and Jamie joined us and it was a relaxing evening and the perfect end to a marvelous day! 

Something magical happened today. And I'll never forget what it felt like.

Here are some extra pictures to fill out the rest of the story :)

The view of the countryside out the window

On top of the world after running through the field of grass!

In the Hundred Acre Woods ;)

Pooh Corner!

And finally, for one last image to leave you with...E.H. Shepherd's illustration of the Enchanted Place, and how it still looks just the same to this very day :)