No matter where we grow up, we view our surroundings as somewhat enchanted, I think. Mostly that’s because childhood itself enchants all it touches. Everything is new to us, and our young minds can pretend at the drop of a hat, transforming ourselves and the world. And of course, wherever we grew up, we grew up in a region that was already pre-enchanted before we arrived by the folktales and folkways of the generations before us. So now let me tell you of my enchanted land.
I’m talking about the region of the US known as New Netherlands. It once encompassed the lands from Vermont to Delaware, but its heart was the Hudson River. Formed by the glaciers of the last Ice Age carving through layers of rock and exposing millions of fossils, the Hudson Valley itself is a natural marvel. It has also long been the main crossroads of two great Indian nations: the Iroquois and the Algonquin. And finally, it became one of the earliest areas of European settlement, first Dutch and Later English, and the site of many battles of the American Revolution. In my childhood it was not unusual to find fossils, arrowheads or stone paint pots, or bits of Colonial-era metal or glass while out playing in the woods. And the mix of Indian and Dutch place-names made every small excursion seem like an exotic adventure.
But what really enchanted the part of the world I call my ancestral home were the folktales. They peopled the Long Island, Hudson Valley, and Catskill Mountains of my youth with elves, witches, ghosts, magical fish, peg-legged rogues, and fools. They made the night wind blow chills up my spine and turned scudding clouds into schooners. Every child was told as a matter of course not to fear the thunder; it was just Rip Van Winkle playing nine-pins with the elves. And on Halloween we listened for the hoof beats of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
Recently researching this region as a sober Southwesterner produced the disappointing fact that both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow were not the Dutch folktales they purported to be, but the wholesale creation of Washington Irving, a British-American trying to imitate and slyly mock the Dutch and their tales. But no matter. My research also revealed plenty of real Dutch tales, both brought from the Old World and created in the New. And of course there are also the venerable stories of the Native tribes who occupied the land long before the Dutch and then the British arrived.
Now of course we all grew up in pre-enchanted places, thanks to generations of people who told stories. But if you are looking to add to your places of enchantment, may I suggest you visit New Netherlands, especially in the autumn, when silver mists rise mysteriously above the flaming leaves in the wooded valleys like the smoke from long-ago campfires, and the rustling of leaves and trilling of brooks speaks in ancient tongues. But if you can’t get there, don’t worry. The same enchantment awaits in the folktales of the region I call my homeland.
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