Margaret Elliott's story of how her Nature Spirit book came to be.

(This account was written 2008)

Although the children’s story “Nature Spirits in the Forest”, was written some years ago, its messages from the nature kingdoms are eternal and for children of all ages, as well as a reminder for their parents.

In a beautiful valley in northern New South Wales, Australia, I lived for seven magical years at the edge of a sub-tropical forest with vistas to distant mountains, no visible neighbours and natural bushland covering the mountain behind. The Caldera of the Tweed Valley was created by a massive volcano which spread its erupted lava for hundreds of miles and left a donut-shaped flat valley with high mountains all around and an even higher mountain in its centre called Wollumbin (or Mt Warning as Captain Cook named it as he sailed along the Australian coastline).  This is near the famous, or infamous, Nimbin and Byron Bay.

Not long after I had come to live in the valley I wanted to investigate past lives and sought out a ‘psychic’.  Instead I met a ‘reader or channel extraordinaire’.  When I arrived she immediately asked if I liked nature because she saw nature spirits all around me.  I innocently asked, “what are nature spirits?”  She explained they were like fairies, but many that are being seen today are very different from the traditional pretty little ones with wings and were more for the children of the present time.  She told me I saw everything when I was a child until I went to school.  She described some she had seen on her travels around the world, and they were weird and wonderful colours and shapes.  I had never been interested in books about fairies as a young child, and she said that was perfect, for I had no preconceived ideas of what I would be seeing.  She said I would be telling their story and also drawing their images for children to learn to protect the forests in the future; a book for pre-school age.  She told me little about ‘past lives’.

Leaving her I felt rather excited but with a very blank screen in front of me.  I had never written any stories and had only recently dabbled in painting.  This was quite a responsibility.
Every week some friends and I went for day-long bushwalks in the forests surrounding the valley, oftentimes to remote areas with no paths or guidelines or other people. These wonderful excursions were energizing yet we returned home feeling peaceful and rested.

Shortly after the reading with the ‘channel’ I was lying in bed the morning after a bushwalk remembering some of the areas we had been to, and in particular a huge and well-known ironbark tree.  Suddenly there was a human-sized, green gossamer being in my vision quivering and swaying and looking at me with the most intense, yet gentle, love I had ever felt.  Its eyes were very long and like chocolaty brown velvet.  We looked at each other for some time and it was a beautiful feeling. I have no idea how long this trance lasted, but I then remember thinking: ‘are there more?’ and my mind went past it to another; a soft pink rounded shape hovering over a large boulder, also looking at me tenderly.  Again I cast my mind further along and there was a third one; a happy star-shaped green being dancing on the path.   That was it.  Nothing said, no action taken, just the images of these three lovely beings looking back at me.

It dawned:  nature spirits!

Over the next few months I saw another nine or so clearly enough to draw them, as the images stayed in my mind as strongly as when one remembers a very vivid dream the following morning.  All the visions came to me while I was awake, except one.  With this one I had a dream where I was in the back seat of a car travelling to a mountain peak in the valley and I looked out the window to see a being travelling beside us looking in the window at me.  Kachina later explained, when I saw her a second time, that it was one of the three beings who work over a prominent female peak at the edge of the caldera.  I persevered for years trying to hear the words for the book. 

The images were done, even though it was a fairly painful process as I didn’t feel I had the skills to paint them.  Also I felt a huge responsibility to get this information out there, and I was failing.  The task was given to me and I heard no words.  In frustration I engaged a children’s author to write a story for me, but it contained conflict and a little fear; not the sort of genre with which I was comfortable.  Where was the love and cooperation and safety for children in the forest?

With pen and paper at the ready I sat for hours in the forest. I meditated and meditated and I heard nothing.  ‘Seeing’ them was something I could grasp and put on paper, but I didn’t hear any words or what they were saying to write down for children to read.  I could make up stories, but I had an instruction (through the channel): “You will tell the story of the nature spirits and why they have come here at this time.” What story! I rang her a couple of times and told her I had no words.  She said, “you will.’  Previously she had told me a little about the three spirits I saw at the lake and the three golden spirits on the Peak.  The rest of the stories I ‘made up’, and finally this year (2008) have self-published the little book “Nature Spirits in the Forest”. 

Perhaps this is their story.  Perhaps I shall find their story is being told through me whether I know it or not!
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Blessings, Margaret