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- The Kid, Peter, Paul, and Mary

From time to time, myth and fact will come face to face, and what follows is an age-old battle. Most of the time, fact will come out as the winner, for it will beat mythos down until it is nothing. But that is the nature of cold hard reason. Fact doesn't like myth, because myth strays fromwhat is seen as 'truth'. Sometimes, myth does come out on top, because... well, myth is just more enjoyable.

Cascade Copyrighted by Jon Bowser

One of the more common battlegrounds today ocures over the movies. If I had a dime for everytime someone critiqued a move, saying how 'wrong' this was in the movie, or how 'that' wouldn't have happened 'that' way, I'd be extremly wealthy right now. I hear this sort of thing all the time ('That was nothing like how it really was then') and have even done it a time or two myself. Maybe we are becoming too educated when we are no longer able to enjoy a story for just being a story. Centuries ago, when oral story telling was the way of things, people relied on bards to inform them and to entertaint them. People cared little for how accurate a story of song was. Rather, the more colorful the tale, the better. The storyteller who told the most interesting stories was more successful. People didn't want to hear dry, boring facts. Their lives were like that daily. They wanted, for a brief moment, to be swept up into a fantasy of a life and events that they could only dream of. Most of the legends that have lasted until modern day were embellished and colored by storytellers. King Aurthur, Robin Hood and Beowulf are some examples. Today, there's still the question of whether or not these were real people. And if they were, I doubt their lives were nearly as exciting as they are remembered to be.

Both fact and fiction have their places, but they usually do not mesh well. We, in the modern thinking world, take our education very seriously. Those of us who know more facts than others like to make sure those others know how 'smart' we are. This practice helps to stifle imagination and creativity. We want our fiction to be as accurate and close to true as possible, thus making it 'believable'. Then, is it truly fiction? If all stories were absolutley accurate according to history and science, would they not be merely history and science lessons?

Reality stilfes fantasy enough, especially for adults who have to make it to their nine to five jobs, make house payments and worry about taxes. These things don't allow room for fantasy. But for those places where fantasy does find a place, let's not stomp it to death because it's inaccurate according to fact. Rather, it is something that should be nutured and appreciated for what it is, all the way from the big screen on down to your heart.

Snow Spirits
Copyrited by Jeffrey Bedrick