Disappearing Magic

Luis is a fan of those "Weird Places in Wisconsin" books and websites. He likes finding out about the odd little spots that most of us simply drive by and never realize are there.

Every once in a while, when he gets on a kick of looking for odd spots near us, I remember one that my father took us to as children. It was a miniature village located on a hillside. This was just down the road a little bit from the driveway to a farm that my parents owned in Vermont Township. If someone was driving along, all that would be seen is set of wooden stair built into a hillside, Civilian Conservation Corp style.

I remember walking from the Vermont farm down to this hillside with my dad a few times. Walk up the stairs, and it was like entering a world of gnomes. There was a little village up there: church, farm, homes, buildings. It was truly magical to me as a child.

Once, when Luis was looking at a book or website on oddball sites in Wisconsin, we even found a reference to this hidden village. It was listed as a spot that used to exist, but that had likely fallen into disrepair or had disappeared.

This weekend, we were on a family outing that took us up to Mount Horeb, and we took the back way to The Shoe Box in Black Earth. I thought of the little village as we went past Tyrol Basin, and I directed Luis to take a small mystery trip.

As we parked on the curve just past Peculiar (if you know the story of that name, you an old-time local), it did not look good. The stairs were long gone, and the path was completely overgrown with small trees and underbrush. I couldn't even say for certain where the stairs had been until after I had already climbed up the side of the hill and looked down.

The older three kids and I scaled the side of the hill and fought our way through the brush until we found it. The village was no more, but surprisingly, there was still a clearing there, an open spot on a hillside that is now full of small trees and bushes. There were a few old relics of the village in the clearing, enough to let me know that I had not misremembered things: a church, a barn, the old silo, a "brick" foundation of another building balanced upon a flat rock. The two buildings had been moved next to one another, and both were missing their roofs. There was small saplings growing up through both buildings.

It was a little heartbreaking to see something so magical simply falling apart, but that is what happens when the person who envisioned the magic is gone. I am sure that the creator of the village was an older man, and that he has long since left this world.

As we were up on the hillside, someone who lives in the farm below and across the road come out and got his lawnmower out of the barn. We were not stealthy at all, parking blatantly on his property on a curve and trespassing on the hillside rather noisily. Vincent said something to Luis about the man mowing his lawn not knowing what we were doing. Luis replied that the man probably did know.

That statement has been sticking with me. I hope that that man did know what we were looking for. I hope he knew of the village before it fell into disrepair. I hope that he remembers the magic and that he is happy that someone else in the world remembers it too, remembers it enough to bring her family to come look for it.

As long as there are a few people who can remember, magic lives on.