My grandmother Etta had a large extended family.  Her grandfather, who had sailed from London to America at the age of 14, had umpteen children by the time he homesteaded here.  All but one of his sons stayed here to farm and raise their families, so Etta had a lot of relatives.

The family would get together as often as they could, and one hot summer Sunday they gathered at her uncle Ed’s farm near the Beaver Creek above Boone.  Bored with grown up talk, Etta and her cousin Helen wandered down to the creek.  As they approached a grove of cottonwoods they were surprised to hear music.  As they got closer they discovered a man and his three daughters in a tree house built in a large cottonwood.  This tree house was so large it even had a piano in it, and the man and his daughters were playing and singing.

Upon seeing Etta and Helen approach, the man invited them up into the tree where they spent an enchanted afternoon.  This made a big impression on my grandmother – she’d never seen anything like it – and she talked about it for the rest of her life.  In time the tree house with the piano became part of neighborhood lore and is still remembered today.

In the final weeks of her life my grandmother, who was still possessed of her mental faculties, began revealing secrets.  We mostly heard about suitors she’d never told my grandfather about, and the diverse – and sometimes desperate – ways they’d tried to woo her.

But one night she told about the tree house.  Only this time she told the full story, a story we’d never heard before.  As evening fell Etta and her cousin Helen returned to the farmstead where they told everyone about the tree house with the piano only to find that no one believed them.  Many family members said they were just making the story up, but the girls were so insistent that finally a delegation accompanied the girls back to the tree house so they could see for themselves.

Only the tree house wasn’t there.  The girls were reprimanded for wasting everyone’s time and that was that.  But both Etta and Helen knew what they’d experienced was real.  Even many years later they would still tell this story.  Up to, that is, the point where they returned and the tree house was gone.

It’s easy, I know, for anyone who didn’t know my grandmother to believe that she made it up.  But I believe she believed it.

I once shared Etta’s story with author Duane Hutchinson who wrote a number of books about ghosts and other strange phenomena in the Great Plains.  He felt – and I agree – that this tale had so much in common with worldwide folktales about encounters with fairies (who traditionally looked just like everyone else rather than Tinkerbell) that it was quite possible that’s what Etta and Helen had experienced.

This last weekend Lori, the kids and I went out to look for the Fairy Tree.  Though the Beaver has changed course, a half-dozen ancient and gigantic cottonwoods still stand where my grandmother insisted this had happened.  I looked as closely as I could for any sign that a real tree house had once been there but could see nothing.  We’ll never know what really happened, but part of me likes to think that every now and then the fairies really do sing in the tops of the trees, and even though they weren’t home Saturday, I’d like someday to hear them…