While I was off at the Lindau Nobel meeting, hanging out with mere Nobel prize winners and scientists and enthusiastic graduate students, I seem to have missed my chance to hang out with fairies and angels.

About 250 people came to the Methow Valley June 26 through 28 from as far away as Europe and Hawaii to participate in the ninth annual Fairy and Human Relations Congress, an outdoor festival in a secluded mountain meadow called Skalitude.

Hey, I know where that is — near Twisp (a wonderful name for a fairy congress), Washington, and very lovely place. And they were gathered for such a noble purpose!

“The purpose of the congress is to encourage communication and cooperation of the fairy realm,” said Michael “Skeeter” Pilarski, the event’s founder and organizer.

The human world is in crisis and can use all the help it can get, Pilarski said, so why not form alliances with those in other realms?

Why not, indeed. It sounds so reasonable. They’re also right about something.

Skeptics might mock the participants or dismiss them as New Age hippies, but they say their belief system is not much different from Native American animists or even Christians who believe in angels.

You’re exactly right, Skeeter. There’s no difference at all between what you’re doing and what’s going on in churches every day, all across the world.