"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing? / Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?" Granted, the song is decrying war, but the lyrics still fit. Magic is gone from our land, and though we know not where, the "why" is easily understood: The Industrial Revolution, with the advent of "technology", has driven magic from the world. Nowadays, we can call someone up on the telephone and have a conversation with him or her half a world away; we fly across the oceans in great metal birds; we travel to and from work in great smoke-spewing beasts. Doubtless, all this would seem to be "magic" to earlier people, as the technology of the future - transporter beams, genetic engineering, and faster-than-light travel - would seem to us. However, it is a different sort of magic: the magic of technology is achieved by humanity. It is not the younger, vibrant magic that walked the lands when the world was born.

The advent of the railorad, specifically in young America, is credited with many things, but no one ever seems to attribute the fading of magic to it. Unfortunatately, it was the railroad that began to drive magic from the land, not in trickles, but in streams. Running across cold iron tracks and spewing a smoky black miasma, the railroad found the lands of the fae and took them for itself. For iron is deadly to beings of magic: they can neither abide its touch, nor cross its path. The cold iron tracks divided the lands of the fae, separating kith from kin.

The cold iron and black smoke proved deadly bane to no small few as well. Perhaps it is a guilty conscience that drives many to urge loggers to "save the spotted owls," for it is the logging industry that destroyed the habitat of many magical beings in the early days of America. Though the spotted owl is certainly not a magical being itself, the fight to keep it from becoming extinct at least lets humanity soothe its aching conscience and pretend that it is a good steward of the land. To be fair, the lumber industry is not fully to blame; rather, it was the ever-expanding need for housing and farmland that fueled the drive to hack down the virgin forests of a younger land. Regardless of what deserves the blame, the habitat for many varieties of magical beings - from sprite to unicorn - now lies a barren dustbowl, life-sustaining trees hacked down and hauled away many, many years ago.

It is not just the lumber industry that destroyed the lands; miners have destroyed the land and its magic in much the same way. Though, rather than merely stripping the trees from the soil, miners stripped tonnes and tonnes of the soil from the earth, leaving great aching wounds in the face of the earth in their quest for a few nuggets of precious metals: gold, copper, silver, and cold iron. The earth itself cried out in pain, and the fae were driven away or driven mad.

The final blow, however, came neither from the railroad nor from the logging and mining industries, but rather from a most unexpected quarter: musicians. Once representing the lifeblood of all humanity's magic and resounding with the magic of the land, musicians changed - seemingly overnight. Gone now are the sonnets and ballads. Gone now are the great orchestral pieces inspired by nature's majesty. Instead, we have the synthesized, artificial sounds of trance, dance, and pop. Instead, we have the grating violence of rap and the annoying twang of country. The fae, unable to withstand this blow against their very lifeblood, either fled our world or died out - taking their magic with them. And, as a result, our world is a much poorer place.

So, while it is the Industrial Revolution that gets the blame as the catalyst - railroads, loggers, miners, and musicians being labled as major causes - it is, in truth, the unrelenting forward march of humanity that has driven magic from our lands. And lest we drive out all else and eventually ourselves, we need to take the time to appreciate the lingering echoes of a bygone magic: a "magical" sunset, resplendent with crimsons and golds; the "magic" of your first love, first kiss, and first born; the "magic" in the music of the old masters - Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Bach, Greig, Holst, and others; and the "magic" of each other. Perhaps one day we will again have more than just lingering echoes, and magic will again dewll in our midst. Until that day, however, be strong. And take the time to slow down.