Echo Beach Tide Pools

Searching for Merlin

By Keith Alan Johnson
03-11-2000


        I started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy as a child. The first book I read was "The Forgotten Door" by Alexander Key. It was about a boy who fell through a portal and landed on another world. He arrived with amnesia and with no idea what had happened. As the book progressed he started demonstrating some unusual abilities such as mind reading and understanding animals. Soon it became apparent that the other world he was on was Earth and he was from elsewhere.
        The next book that had an impact on me was "Moon of Three Rings" by Andre Norton. With this one I actually discovered the genre of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It actually combined the two. One character could manipulate nature while the other was a spacer with psi talent.
        In both these books the lives of the main characters were greatly changed through what my father has called phantasmigorical forces. At the time I read those books I was looking for escape within the pages. I fantasized that some of that strange wonder could happen to me. I would wander the trails around my home with my imagination running wild. Perhaps I was searching for Merlin or Gandalf, some great wizard who would show me the magic. As I wandered those trails I would swear I could feel the magic in the air. It was great fun.
        As I grew older some of that magical feeling faded into adulthood… some, not all. In college I would wander the arboretum on Seahome Hill. I would get that tingly feeling especially in the fall as I jogged through the dried maple leaves on the occasional sunny days. I still get it with tremendous force if I stand on an ocean shore and feel the roaring waves crash on the beach. A summer thunderstorm will have me giggling by the open window.
        Now days I feel I've found my magic again. There are crocuses just now blooming by our driveway. Tulips are pushing up behind them. The trees are starting to bud out where last year there were no trees. My aunt gave me a vine some years ago. For about three years it was a mere two inch stalk. Now it sits in our kitchen window. I've mixed the elements of water and sunlight and applied it to the vine. Now the vine has miraculously expanded ten fold.
        When I step outside for my walk I feel the magic in the spring air. I can hear the magic in the chorus of frogs in the distance. I can smell the magic as it drifts in the scent of the trees and flowers coming to life. When I go to a convention of Science Fiction fans I feel the magic in the creativity around me, in the intensity of focus on a common theme.
        The magic that I would escape to has been around me all along. I just needed give it the name "magic".

        03-11-2000 


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