Hunnewell Woods has spent the better part of the last three months haunted. But not in the usual way. This time, the unnatural creatures were – fairies!

My usual running route around Lake Waban and past Wellesley College had been closed to the public for weeks per the pandemic, and hence I adopted Natick’s Hunnewell woods for walks and jogging. 

Near the beginning of the shutdown, I noticed increased foot traffic in the forest, a phenomenon I ascribed to folks seeking freedom from cabin fever.

But then flashes of vivid color ever and anon began to catch my eye - tiny, cloistered figures appearing here and there. So ubiquitous were they, that some organized effort soon seemed at play. Something was afoot. 

Their painted faces peered out fromhollows of trees where they’d been tucked away, or suspended from low branches, stirred midair sometimes by a breeze.

Many of the displays were intricate, one of them an ode to the Boston Marathon, cancelled due to coronavirus. In that scene, a tiny finish-line tape awaited a fitness fairy in the recess of a tree.

It seemed something more than freedom and fresh air was behind the sudden fame of Hunnewell Forest; a fetish and fascination with fairies played no small part as well.

The Fairyland Project was founded by Virginia Fitzgerald and Michele Sweeney, who sought to create something special in a time of seclusion and uncertainty. Playgrounds and schools being closed, the effort was conceived in part as an avenue for parents to coax young kids out from the houses they’d been sequestered in for weeks.

“We really felt bad for families with small children,” said Fitzgerald.

She is a celebrated mixed-media artist, and Sweeney an electrical engineer. The two friends are Natick residents and became regular walkers of the town forest early in the shutdown, and there began brainstorming and scheming about how the Fairyland Project would unfold.

The two Fairy Godmothers (as they took to calling each other)began by creating elaborate fairies out of reclaimed materials, and placing the tiny new residents in auspicious places among the pines. In lore and literature, fairies have a strong connection with the natural world. One of the duo’s creations featured a fairy bobbing at the border of the forest marsh, atop a buoyant raft of wine corks resembling little logs.

Sweeney is a four-time marathon runner, and the Boston marathon fairy was Fitzgerald’s nod to her friend’s accomplishments, set in place on what would have been marathon Monday. Sweeney claims to have little artistic talent, yet made around 50 of the figures by hand during the duration ofthe project.

The fairies were given names, and were representative of all manner of subject matter and mediums. Sweeney’s penchant for java inspired “Caffeine Cathy” a high strung sprite with wings cut from coffee bags.

“I would make them frantically at night or on the weekends,”she said. “After my coffee.”

The spell had been cast. Charmed by those wee new residents of the woods, anonymous artists were soon adding hand-fashioned fairies of their own. The pixies kept multiplying, and Fitzgeraldand Sweeney began to feel a bond develop between themselvesand the artists-at-large whose imaginations were creating and further populating the piney forest with their own creations.

“As an artist, I loved seeing how the kids were making them,” said Fitzgerald. “It was almost like they were my students.”

The project was not the first of its kind, though other likeminded installations are often made up of store-bought figures. The originality and resourcefulness of the Fairyland Project, said Fitzgerald, imbued it with special charm. 

“Some wonderful energy kept the fairies being handmade and crafty,” she said. “This is very organic, and it just kept growing.”

Like any Fairy Godmothers worth their wings, Sweeney and Fitzgerald walked the woods frequently to check up on theircherubic charges, and to ensure the woods were kept clean of litter.

The two created a Winnie-the-Pooh-themed diorama of fairies, which like bears to honey attracted a family of fans to the forest. The parents and children had heard of the display, and put on a picnic in the presence of the famous fairies.

In one poignant telling, a sealed sandwich bag was found where a fairy had once been. Enclosed within were a dollar and a note hinting that the writer had taken the figure because it elicited memories of a relative who’d passed away.

Fitzgerald said she’s met fairy aficionados from as far away as Arlington, Hudson and the outskirts of Worcester, all having heard of the project and come to observe the figures in their natural habitat. Cars began to crowd the woods’ small, unpaved parking lot on Oak Street. 

Fitzgerald would meet parents and children in the forest, the latter in search of fairies, the former in search of some respite from kids cooped up due to Covid19. She remembers meeting one young fairy seeker spilling out from a car in the lot.

“’We’re gonna find fairies!’” exclaimed the excited little girl.

As is often the case with such creatures in mythology and literature, the spells they cast go sideways as often as not. The fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream play hero to, and havoc with, the human characters that venture into Shakespeare’s forest, and for centuries have charmed countless readers of the Bard’s tales.  That’s the power of art.

Likewise of late have the fairies of Natick’s Hunnewell Forest prodded the passions and emotions of people near and far.Indeed, they seem to have swayed the sentiments of Natickneighbors as dramatically as Shakespeare’s supernatural spritescharmed their own human counterparts.

Like many a Shakespearian story, tensions arose between the townsfolk and the tenants of the trees, between citizens of the city and the bucolic beings just beyond its borders. Some Natick residents voiced concern over the appearance of the fairies in the forest, prompting a town official to contact Fitzgerald about the project.

And so began the Battle of the Fairies.

An accord was agreed upon, wherein Fitzgerald promised that the woods would be kept clear of litter during the fairies’ stay - an ethic she had been adhering to all along. Her regular walks in the woods with Sweeney included fairy maintenance and picking up refuse like bottles and cans. Thus were the fairies given a furlough from their near-forced eviction from the forest.

A Facebook fan page had been founded to keep track of the fairies, document their doings, locations, and migration patterns. Some would be discovered moved from their original sites, likely by some child who’d decided on a better spot.

The social-media site helped to spread word about the sprites in their sanctuary, and drew visitors from miles away. But now several weeks into the project, posts on the page indicated that fairy population seemed somehow to be dwindling.

“The energy was kind of changing,” said Fitzgerald. “We heard the fairies were being kicked out of the forest.”

During one of her woodland walks, a character appeared, as if on cue to create controversy. Fitzgerald found the man filling a trash bag with fairies, like a curmudgeonly Larry David seeking to curb the enthusiasm of the project.

The reason he gave for rounding up the fairies, said Fitzgerald, was that he considered them at odds with the landscape, and was worried the phenomenon would catch on more than it already had. The man also raised a concern about clutter in the forest.

That ethic of environmental stewardship seems to have been selective. Items of litter that have long lingered in the forest include an automobile gas tank, a tire, assorted bottles and cans and paper cups - foreign fixtures that seem not have drawn the same scrutiny that the Fairyland Project has.

Moved by all the work that had gone into the fairies (at project’s peak they numbered around 100), Fitzgerald reached out to reclaim them for the many artists who’d participated. Following a plea on Facebook for their return, two bags of fairies appeared at the forest entrance.

And what drama would be complete without the intervention of the church? The fairies’ negotiated lease on forest land expired on June 15, at which time Natick’s First Congregational Church took them in, offering a safe haven for sprites displaced by the controversy.   

Up until then, the Natick Center Cultural District was a repository for fairies seeking refuge from the rubbish bin. The NCCD had been accepting and displaying them at their Main Street welcome center.

Still, for all the controversy and consternation that accompanied the Fairy Project, Fitzgerald said she imagines its magic will assume center stage in the minds and memories of children during the shutdown, the fairies a starring role. They just might, she hopes, soften the jarring imposition of remote schooling, a spring and summertime spent apart from friends.

“It’s very easy for them to jump into fairy land,” she said. “For me, that’s just gold.”