The Path of Fate?

Looking back, I can see each and every fork in the road that has lead me to this place in this time. I am sure there are many parallel universes where I chose a different fork, and may never have risen above the mundane chaos to the multi-dinemtional world I now inhabit.

From the university interview process almost the other end of the country, where I met two significant people who lived only 25 miles away from my home. I never got into that university, didn't get into any that year with my exam results! But they did, one of them into a polytechnic in Wales. I visited him there, and knew that was where I wanted to be. He dropped out of uni the next year, so he wasn't there when I was - but it was the chance meeting in Bradford that brought me to Wales.

If I hadn't been there, I would never have taken a work placement at a power station in south west Wales. I met a man there, discovered motorbikes, passed my driving test on non-congested roads, and the relationship ended badly.

If it hadn't, I wouldn't have met the man who had the books on Witchcraft. This one wasn't a good relationship either, but it took me to being in the right place at the right time. I lived in an unfurnished cottage in the middle of the countryside. To get to where I lived, you needed to go to the middle of nowhere and out the other side...

My cottage was a conversion. It was a couple of hundred years old, at least, and had served as the school to the chapel next door. The upstairs was a lovely big room with windowsill big enough to sit on. The bedrooms were downstairs, and had been the stables. The landlords lived right next door, but apart from that, the village was a mile away, we didn't even have street lighting.

It wasn't long after I had read Rae Beth's Hedgewitch, and realised that she was describing something I had been following all these years, that I first met with deity. Sitting up in my converted school room, on a clear, still, sunny summer day, I looked out of the window and saw the Green Man looking enigmatically out of a tree. It was a bit like one of those 3d pictures, where an image will suddenly emerge from a chaotic pattern of a background.

I don't know how long he was there, a matter of moments. Long enough to decide I didn't want to share the meeting with my then boyfriend, who quite frankly wasn't worthy of such a gift. Then, as gently as he had come, the Green Man retreated back into the foliage again. I could see the leaves that made up his face, but the spirit wasn't there any more.

There have been more forks in the road since then, that brought me to my husband, that brought me to meeting Tansy, that brought me to all the good friends I now have. I can plot each and every one, and I count my blessings that I followed the right path each and every time.

Love and hugs

Blaidd