Once upon a time, when James and I were gardening, he shouted to me that he had found a dragon. I made 'well done' noises, assuming he was playing a game. A little while later, there was a much more alarmed cry of 'it's moving," at which point I went to see what he'd actually found.
It was a common lizard, which made perfect sense - and not a bad guess for a child who had no doubt seen more dragon pictures than lizard pictures at that point. It's also a good example of how children plug what they observe into what they already know. Inevitably that's going to lead to a lot of mistakes, so there's a lot to be said for expanding knowledge in an affirming way rather than making a child uncomfortable about their best guesses around unfamiliar things.
The second dragon story is a bit more odd. We were on a very long walk - longer than anticipated so I was trying to keep James chatting so that he'd cope better. We'd seen some heavy plant clearly involved in tree cutting, and I'd suggested that might be one way a dragon could hide in the landscape. We crept past the big machines, pretending they were sleeping dragons in disguise. We thought about where else there might be places for dragons to hide.
Then we came out into a field that had a dry stone wall that dipped up and down, snaking down the hill until it came to a little bump that looked like a head. The whole mood shifted, and we looked at each other. I have never seen anything in a landscape that looked so much like a dragon before or since. We crept past it, neither of us spoke until we were well clear of the head. Unlike the same with the big machines, this felt very different - uncanny, and significant. It was a very strange experience.
Things that feel magical can also be alarming. Awe and awful go together as words. Dragons who are really common lizards aren't so scary, but landscapes that feel like dragons are a whole other experience. I'm usually fairly pragmatic and it's rare that the mood of a place gets to me, so I tend to pay attention when it does. I can't make any claims about what happened that day or what it meant, but it was a powerful experience and it gave me feelings of wonder and possibility that haven't featured that often in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment