At Wildacres I found this mysterious arrangement at the base of a tree in the parking lot.
My first thought was of the Yunwi Tsundi -- the Cherokee Little People I've written of before.
Then I decided it might be a charm of the sort my friend Byron Ballard (Asheville's Village Witch) works. The wrapped sticks could be prayer sticks; the pretty rocks, barred off by twigs, could represent wishes being kept safe . . .
That's a horse shoe (well, actually probably a mule shoe) over the door -- for good luck. My grandparents had one over their back door and they insisted it had to be in the UP position 'to hold in the good luck.'
They never mentioned witches but my reading has revealed that the horseshoe, as used in the British Isles, was a charm to keep witches from entering your house at night. (Bad witches, it goes without saying -- not like my friend Byron, The Village Witch.)
It had to be a used horseshoe because the way the charm worked was that before the witch could pass under it, she had to retrace every step that shoe had taken. So the householder would take care to choose a very worn shoe to insure that the witch couldn't complete the task before sun up. After which, evidently, all bets were off and the witch would have to start over.
