Come on a walk with me?

As we stroll down a wide, dusty, quiet path in the woods, a smaller path veers off to the right and downhill toward the creek. Edges of the narrow path bristle with tall grasses and leggy flowers, and this route feels like we’ve been transported to an entirely different forest.

Just beyond the incessant buzzing of hard-working bees, I can almost hear a group of … Hobbits? Robin Hood’s Merry Men? … crossing the creek and walking toward us through the tall grasses.

Why, yes: I imagine these sorts of scenarios more often than not.

And I think about imagination itself quite a lot, too.

And how, when we read fiction that we love — books that come to mind long after we’ve finished reading them — we’re able to approach the real world with an extended-memory playlist of sorts: colorful scenes that spring from our own imaginations or from our memories of the books we’ve read and the characters we’ve encountered on the page.

Let me tell you a story.

As a quintessential shy introvert, I was the kid who would happily lie in bed and read all day. And who actively looked for secret doors in the backs of cupboards.

When I was twelve, we moved far, far away, to a land of forests and castles and it was, in one sense, like stepping into an actual fairytale. There was still school and (for a while) language barriers, and grocery shopping and laundry and all the usual day-to-day things, but there were also cherry orchards and more birds than I’d ever seen or heard before; snow and Christmas markets; and ancient buildings and castle ruins to admire and explore.

When we went for walks on otherwise ordinary wooded paths, I heard the metallic clink and leathery creak of saddle and bridle — and the thundering hooves — of ghostly horses galloping past us. When we toured half-ruined castles perched above the River Rhine, I mentally filled in all the details and imagined the kitchen gardens, the courtyards, and the great halls full of color and people and life.

After five years in Germany, I went off to college in the States, landing smack in the middle of an actual forest, atop a mountain.

While there, although I don’t recall having (or making) much time for fun books, I read medieval history and literature, and studied astronomy. And I walked the forest, discovering delicate wildflowers; creeks and waterfalls; lichen-covered rocks; mosses; leaf-strewn paths; clouds of fireflies; tree frogs and katydids; cicadas; and cliff top views of the green valley, the wide sky, and glorious sunsets. To be sure, this was real nature-magic. But I would argue that it felt especially enchanting in part because of the half-remembered-from-books otherworldly magic still lurking in the back of my mind.

Our favorite stories teach us new ways to see the world, show us how to relate to and understand others and ourselves, and fill up our minds and memories with beauty, magic, far-flung places and times, and extraordinary characters.

Ultimately, it’s not about which books you read, or how many, it’s about how your favorite stories make you feel, and how they nourish your imagination so that you can recognize — and savor — the magic that’s all around you in the real world.