I was on holiday in Cornwall with my family. I think I was about thirteen. We’d been on holiday in Cornwall before, and had joked about the “Little People” who lived in the tin mines. I think we’d also bought souvenir Cornish Piskies in the past.

 

The first proper day of our holiday we went for a walk on a clear sunny day. It was very rural. We were walking down a grassy track with large banks of wild hedges running alongside. It could’ve been somewhere near Polperro. I am not sure.

 

I was walking a few steps ahead of my mum and sisters, excited about having a whole week off, when I saw a gnome sitting by the side of the path. It was so unexpected. I think I remember feeling scared – or wondering if I was seeing things or going mad.

 

I took another couple of steps and I saw his nut brown, wizened face in detail. He was cheekily grinning at me. He had a mossy brown beard and dark brown shining eyes.

 

He was wearing a peaked, brown hat. It was soft, and the peak didn’t stick up, but rested on his shoulder. He was wearing a jacket and trousers in shades of brown and ochre. The material looked shiny — not wet, just like shiny leather I guess. I’d say he was about twelve- to fourteen-inches tall.

 

I literally could not believe my eyes. I was even too dumbstruck to turn around and tell my family to “look at the gnome” by the path. Then the gnome cocked his head (again, cheekily), turned his back on me and kind of changed/melted into an old tree stump.

 

This must’ve all happened in a second, just as I found the breath to say, “Mum! Look…!”

 

But, of course, there was nothing to see but a tree stump. I felt really stupid then, so I muttered something inconsequential as we walked past. I was almost panicking, trying to make sense of what I had just witnessed. I was quite shaken. It was a breathtaking experience. It seemed so silly, (and I felt so silly) that I didn’t tell anyone what I’d just seen. Yet I really believed I had witnessed a spirit of nature, or a gnome, or something… but I also felt stupid. Like a trick and been played on me, and I had fallen for it. I felt like the joke was on me and the gnome was having a laugh about it.

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Bees buzz around
bramble and flowers,
circling a red cheeked
gnome clad in yellow and green
clothes with a brown cap,
holding a wicker basket.

–Joseph Kushnir