Ham Hill Country Park with a bit extra slipping through from another dimension.
When I moved from London to Peasedown St John I had little idea how much living in London had stunted my being and how much waking up I had to do. In discovering this new world I had moved to I visited Avebury, having never been to a megalithic site before. I took the tourist route, following the signs, and was amazed by the magnitude of the site and its undertaking. I eventually arrived at what are known as the Portal Stones, one of which has a natural seat shaped hollow into which I gratefully plonked my rear end to rest my weary bones. Within moments I began to experience a strange shaking in my stomach, which steadily increased almost to the point of discomfort. What was surprising is that I wasn’t alarmed by this and I sat experiencing it for some time until it gradually faded and ceased. I picked up my camera, made my way to my car and headed home. On the road for just a minute I was suddenly overcome with tears, crying such as I’d never done before. My overwhelming feeling was that the experience I’d just had was a homecoming, a welcome, an opening up and the beginning of a detox from my life in London. My only explanation was that I had been welcomed by what I chose to call ‘The Earthsong’, I had been met by the land in some primal way and I was being welcomed as a part of it.
I’ve been to Avebury and other megalithic sites many times now, plus a couple of Solstice celebrations. I’ve been regaled with stories, recommended books and enthusiastic theories. The simple truth is I don’t care why they are there or how they were built, I enjoy the sense of mystery much more than all the pointless conjecture. Why spoil the wonder? Like a gorgeous sunset, silence in the presence of something awe inspiring is a fine thing.
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 
Keith, Found you on Catana’s blog. I think mystery and imagination are being leached out of the race. With the rise of digital technology, all the emphasis is now on the speedy transfer of information.
Information is alright IN ITS PLACE, but i fear that it has now gained a stranglehold on how we educate our young and on our whole lives in general. It’s weird. People who will never make a movie now want to see, for example, at the end of DR WHO, how the llusions contained in the episode were achieved. Wot the? Coleridge talked about ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’. What’s happening now is the very opposite.
I love mystery. I love things can can’t be explained.
Sorry about the rave, it just came out. I think the portal stones had somethng to do with it 🙂
Thank you for visiting Danielle and for taking the time to comment. I agree that imagination is under threat, but I disagree as to the cause. I do not think that the availability of information is a problem so much as what we do with it and how, or whether, we process it. There is an old teaching expression, ‘What we hear, we mostly forget, what we see, we remember a little of, what we do sticks.’ Therein lies the problem as I see it, we cannot process information passively, we must engage with it if we are to understand it and to be able to work with it and television is the antithesis of this.
Studies have now shown that television produces a semi vegetative state that has a dramatic effect on our minds and our ability to function and to be pro-active. I do not own a television precisely because it causes enforced passivity, it dulls our critical abilities and has a hypnotic affect, which, after extended viewing, gives rise to irritability, boredom and dissatisfaction. Imagination, like learning, is an active process and unless we engage actively, creatively and thoughtfully with the world we become desensitized, ineffective and dis-empowered.
I welcome and embrace digital technology, but I lament the growing passivity that being mere viewers gives rise to.
More info here: http://child-centred.org.uk/television.htm