Summer Solstice 08

Stonehenge stood in the distance, blending into the grey clouds that pressed upon the landscape releasing a fine drizzle punctuated by brightly coloured umbrellas. Thousands of people formed a line along the fence, like marching ants. Drumming reached my ears and the stones took the shape of a design I had only seen in pictures.

Excited that we’d finally made it I urged my aching limbs forward, hurrying with my friends towards the circle. My first sight of England’s most well known site was made all the more special by the trip down the river Avon to get there – following the footsteps of an ancient people thousands of years before.

The huge megaliths stood solid while the crowd pulsated to the drumming and I stood amazed at the spectacle before me. A feeling of calm spread through me – similar to the time I had visited Uluru years before, on the other side of the world.

People from all walks of life milled about. Some stumbled past inebriated, one chanted ‘Summer Sol, Sol, Sol…’ clearly under the influence of something. He fell to the ground not far from me and twitched as he answered the question in my mind.
‘K Hole, K Hole, K Hole’ he repeated.

Cider cans and plastic bags littered the ground and I wondered at the lack of reverence for a site so closely entwined with England. The ingenuity of the people who had transported these enormous rocks here and erected them in this precise pattern was mind blowing, surely a little respect for it wasn’t much to ask?

My thoughts drifted back to our journey along the Avon, the calm river speckled with starlight, the ghosts of swans disappearing before us in the predawn and then the frantic paddling to save ourselves from the weir and the menacing spikes that poked from beneath the rushing water. It was hard to think how the Neolithic people managed to move these giant stones along that same route.

The ancient stones seemed to hold their breath, waiting for the madness to subside and leave them to return to their pondering. Still contained in my bubble I began to notice the difference in each slab of sandstone, bluestone and sarsen, carried from distant places. Lichen and birds had made their homes in the crevasses and chinks, in some way giving them further life, making them relevant to now, more so than the festivities that continued around me.

Tired of the crowd we turned to leave; sleep beckoned our aching bodies as we returned for our boats and then home to sleep and dream of ancient times.