The Fishing Trip

While fishing at a secluded pond during sunset, I began to hear soft, droning, wooden flutes in the nearby woods. Dismissing it as my overactive imagination playing while my mind wandered, I continued to cast and tease my lure, but the slow, somber sounds grew. Not in volume or intensity, but in the number of musical voices contributing to the insistent, quiet chord, the likes of which I’d never before heard or imagined. I reeled in my bait, hastily packed my gear and unsteadily made my way up the trail I’d walked many times, yet this trek was saturated with a continuously growing feeling of reverence and fear. The sunlight had faded and the new moon offered no illumination, yet my eyes perceived an unearthly glow ahead of me, growing at a nearly imperceptibly slow rate. Trembling, my legs strode a few more steps up the gentle slope before I became paralyzed by the majesty of one tree. I’d never before paid any attention to the ordinary looking trees along this trail, but tonight, one shone with a regal brilliance in the center of hundreds of tiny, softly glowing entities weaving through the still air when I realized that the countless flutes were indeed also these miniscule, inexplicable spirits, swirling about the luminescent pine. Smothering in simultaneous awe and dread, a compulsion from somewhere within me enabled me to capture this solitary image before terror propelled me to my car, leaving behind the fishing tackle. I frantically dove into the driver’s seat; mercifully the car started and I somehow fled home without crashing from the panic in which I’d become engulfed.