Thumbelina’s secret architect revealed
Tiny houses built in the forest of suburban New Jersey rich in fairy-tale lore
Intricate little fairy houses started appearing in the woods of South Mountain Reservation here about five years ago.
They were delicate creations made largely of the natural materials one might find in the woods: a chair seat made of an acorn, a ladder of twigs, a seat back fashioned from a fungus fan, a sofa cushioned with moss.
And they mainly dotted a part of the Rahway Trail in Locust Grove, a short walk from downtown Millburn that draws dog walkers and runners from the surrounding towns.
There were 20 to 30 of them, new ones replacing old ones over the years, discreetly tucked in a tree hollow or artfully incorporated into a root. They all had a similar enchanting style and looked like the work of one person, but nobody seemed to know exactly who.
“It was like a treasure hunt to find them and exciting and lovely,” said Gail Waimon, a member of the South Mountain Conservancy, a volunteer group that maintains and leads hikes through the 2,110-acre (854-hectare) nature reserve in Essex County.
“But this year I noticed the houses multiplying by leaps and bounds,” she said.
In the spring, a new breed of fairy house started popping up along the same trail. They were crude by comparison: plastic toy houses with leaves stuck to the top; ready-made, paint-your-own wooden doll furniture, like one might find in a craft store; and even, in one case, a whiteboard with the words “Fairy House.”
Some were tastefully set back from the path, the way the originals had been, but others were plopped right at the trail’s edge. They were a mishmash of styles. Some replicated the look of the original homes. Others looked like the work of children, painted garish unwoodslike colours and housing plastic toys like green army men.
“Some of them were getting a little tacky,” Dennis Percher, the chair of the conservancy’s board of trustees, said. “They had Smurfs and stuff.”
Regular visitors to the woods were not pleased. And apparently neither was the mystery architect of the original fairy homes who, in response, etched a sign on a sheaf of wood and tucked it into a tree stump — “Fairies Like: Acorns, pine cones, shells, flowers and pretty stones. Not plastic.”
The elfin ordinance, however, did not quell a rash of new construction.
A steady flow of parents and their children and small Girl Scout groups started arriving at the reservation to hunt for the fairy homes, having heard about them from parenting blogs and the local news media. A few left behind their own creations.
Percher and others in the conservancy were torn. So in June the conservancy posted its own sign at the trailhead: “Please follow the Fairy House rules! Natural materials only. No plastic or glass. Do NOT paint trees.”
The group hoped the sign would encourage fairy enthusiasts to preserve the original work by the mystery person, someone a few members thought they had once met.
A woman, some years ago, had identified herself to a couple of conservancy members as they worked at a table at an environmental event.
“She was short and elfin like with a round friendly face,” said John Verzani, a vice-chair of the conservancy.
Indeed, the woman was the architect of the original fairy houses. Therese Ojibway, a 60year-old special education teacher, chuckled at Verzani’s description of her.
Ojibway took to the woods years ago when her son, Clinton, who is now 25, was 3. He has autism, and the nature reserve has been a place of freedom for him and a retreat for her.
Five years ago she started building the fairy houses, drawing on a childhood she said was rich in fairy-tale lore and stories like “Thumbelina” by Hans Christian Andersen.
She said she was also the person who had painted green marks on the trees — fairy wings, she said, to direct children.
“Yeah, that was me,” she said. “I hate to admit it because I think the conservancy got mad at that.”