When a 3.5-foot-long black snake slithered through the grass within striking distance of Caroline Kenner, she did not cry out in terror.
Instead, Kenner was overjoyed.
‘‘That is such a blessing. I’m so happy,” she exclaimed, staring at the snake as it disappeared into the nearby woods. ‘‘The fairies sent him to be with us.”
Kenner was excited because, according to some fairy traditions, snakes are a good sign.
Kenner, a shamanic healer from Silver Spring, saw the snake during the fourth annual Maryland Faerie Festival in Upper Marlboro on Saturday and Sunday, a two-day event held among the fields and trees of the Patuxent 4-H Center.
On one level, organizers said they intended the festival, which drew about 3,000 visitors from around Maryland and neighboring states, to be an imaginative celebration of fairy traditions that included everything from a Maypole, a unicorn and people in elaborate fairy costumes to crafts vendors, live music and games.
But organizers said the festival had a more serious dimension, which explains why Kenner was not scared of the snake.
‘‘The purpose [of the festival] is educating the future stewards of the earth, in the form of children, to appreciate the spiritual aspects of nature,” said Kenner, dressed in a green fairy costume and wearing an ivy garland in her curly blond hair.
Festival producer Tom Friedel, of Upper Marlboro, said the event was designed not only to entertain children and the inner child, but to promote environmentalism.
‘‘The main purpose for me is to have people really think about ecology, about the environment and what we’re doing to the environment,” Friedel said.
To that end, organizers invited representatives of the Patuxent Riverkeeper, a watershed organization based in Upper Marlboro, the Accokeek Foundation and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to attend.
Friedel said the Maryland Faerie Festival, which became a registered nonprofit organization late last year, aims to one day buy land and set up an environmental center.
While the festival is now bringing in just enough money to finance the next one, Friedel said a goal of last weekend’s event was to donate some of the proceeds to the Patuxent Riverkeeper and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
For many festival-goers, the event was an opportunity to indulge in family fun.
‘‘There are so few things in the area you can bring kids to that are creative and imaginative,” said Kris Willette, who came to the festival from Baltimore with her husband and seven-year-old daughter.
Don Willette, her husband, pointed to a multi-colored puppet booth built on the back of a giant turtle and said, ‘‘It’s this stuff that makes it cool.”
Chase Seger, an 11-year-old from Frederick who came with his parents and little sister, said the festival was a good way to spend time with his family.
Chase attended the festival wearing a brown tunic and elf ears.
‘‘I told a couple people they’re real,” he said.
One activity that celebrated a fairy tradition was the wishing tree grove, a small clearing in the woods where people could write wishes on white ribbons and tie them to trees.
Kenner said that on Saturday evening she was going to take all the ribbons and burn them in a ceremony. This would send the wishes up to the fairies, who would then decide which wishes to grant.
One of the wishes tied around a tree trunk read: ‘‘I wish to see a fairy.”
E-mail Andy Zieminski at azieminski@gazette.net.
