June 15 2018. Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK. I took family members to Stonehenge today, I grew up about thirty miles to the south and have admired it several times over the years, usually just in passing, it was one of those places that happened to be on the way. Familiarity does not breed contempt, I still consider it a thought provoking privilege to see Stonehenge. It’s a grand place, despite all that goes along with being a checklist-destination.
It is difficult to find a way to describe the sight and feel of those pillars without trotting out one or more of a handful of now exhaustively overworked adjectives: timeless, awesome and iconic would be among them. Perhaps the nineteenth century, Wessex author Thomas Hardy hit the nail on the head best, describing it concisely as “…older than the centuries.” And so it is, immovable, silent and utterly disinterested in our opinions of it.
Stonehenge stands in a windswept, hedgerow-partitioned landscape of different greens, dotted with equally ancient burial-mound outliers. As we walked up a gently sloping grassy footpath I listened to an ascendent Skylark in full song. The male Skylark defines his territory with an accumulative song building a several-minutes-long succession of liquid notes, whistles and trills, it only ends once he’s touched the undersides of the summer clouds and dropped back to somewhere near his mate’s nest. It’s a stepping-stone song that is as much a part of this open landscape as Stonehenge, Skylarks were most likely here hundreds of years before the stones arrived. However those early people contrived to move and erect those massive stones it is likely that they would have listened to a Skylark’s song just as I did today.
And in a real flight of fancy: Is it possible that in fact the stones were hauled hundreds of miles and so arranged to somehow acoustically provide a central spot where people could gather on a summer day and listen to Skylarks? Bird of the Day any day.
Very emotive Peter. Perhaps we should re-write our history and decide, once and for all, that this has nothing to do with ancient rites, fertility or othrwise, moon reckoning and a calendar for goodness knows what, etc., but rather a simple mounment in praise and recognition of the very many breeding skylarks with their gorgeous flight song. Perhaps are ancient forfathers though these little songsters were their long-lost ancesters come back to join them.
Be thankful that yuu were not visiting next week-end with all the “Hippies” and hordes and, presumably, a number of police taken off speed camera duties!