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‘I was in the woods along the *** highway, between *** Canyon and *** peak. Maybe a half mile from the hairpin turning road. I’d sat a long time, so long that animals had returned to their activities and noises, as if I weren’t present. Birds, deer, all moving about, rather close. I was little more than arm’s distance from a doe, eating, for some time. I got the feeling that I wasn’t the only person around, which startled me. I looked about, and saw movement, about mid-high up in an aspen, that then held still. I looked where the movement was, and realized I had eye contact with a ‘person’ but their skin looked like the aspen’s bark. Their hair was black, similar to a bowl cut, where the bangs are blunt and come low almost over the eyes and transitioned to a ring all around their head. I don’t recall if I said something, but I maintained eye contact while I moved to the side, for a better vantage, and to confirm it wasn’t a trick of light. They had wings or a cloak that also resembled the Aspen’s bark and branches in color and texture. He or she was smaller than a person, but not tiny. I’d guess three and a half or four and half feet if standing on the ground. They were positioned with feet hugging the trunk, knees bent up almost tucked into armpit and wing, sort of squatting there. When I moved to observe better, the aspen being startled, and did similar at me [sic]! When my heart leapt for truly seeing what I was seeing, he or she made an expression of ‘oh shit’ in my direction, genuine surprise at being seen, and quickly panned around the back of the tree, and disappeared. For the record, I was completely sober at the time. Completely.’ ‘About four-foot tall, young adult, skin like the Aspen tree he or she was in, inky black hair in a short, clean bowl/bang cropped style, also inky dark eyes, hiding under the bangs of hair. Thin, muscular, not a shred of fat on the body, but healthy muscles like a wild thing has, wiry and close to the body.’ ‘My silence and stillness had brought out other forest life too, as if I weren’t there.’ ‘Yes. It was [a] corporeal [experience], not angelic, not alien or foreign.’ Fairies are ‘nature spirits, tenders or owners of places in space and time’. ‘He or she was very surprised that I could see them and preferred not to be seen.’