STONEHENGE

Greycloak’s poem brought Stonehenge back to me. I have been told by so many people that they were disappointed in Stonehenge, that they felt nothing there, were not impressed and thought the long drive out onto the Salisbury plain a waste of time. My experience was very different. Stonehenge was not what I expected, but it was an experience I will never forget, one that changed me forever.

Walking at Stonehenge

I walk today where I have wished my entire life to walk. I come here in my fiftieth turning, at the cusp of Aries and Taurus. I do not find here what I expected. Not at all.

I expected power. I expected to feel something akin to the spirit medicine I have felt in a younger, wilder land; power that hurls down narrow canyons on sage brush wind; an earth force that pulls the lightening from the sky, energy beating the air; thunder in the ground. No. Not at all. That kind of raw power is not what I find in these great stones, nor in the earth that cradles them. The ground here is silent . . . yet it sings. The air is silent and hugely hollow, yet it is full of massive memory and replete with forever. The only sound is the worshipful piping of the birds. There is power here; vast, deep, immense, but it is not as I thought it would be.

This is the power of endurance, of long remembrance, of sacredness undiminished by time or circumstance. The stones stood. The stones fell. The ground remains sacred; a sanctity of depth and time I have never felt anywhere before.

I knew the stones would be roped off and thought I would not be able to even come close, but the path passes very near; near enough that I can feel the power of the stones in wide waves that sing through my body and radiate under my feet. I hold both hands out open. I am glad the stones are roped off, empty in the hushed hollow air.

Between the stones, I see only grass and birds; the air, the rolling grey sky. Then suddenly in the narrow opening between two stones, I see horns; the perfectly formed figure of a stag - on two legs. Is it only a tree? Only a tree? What folly of words is that? It is The Wood. I turn in a wide circle, gazing at the fringe of woodland that still circles here. It has been cut, it has been pushed back, it has been cultivated, shaped; theoretically tamed, but like much else, it is still here. They are still here. I incline my head to the figure framed between the stones. I am deeply glad.

So I close my eyes, then bring them slowly, barely open; there, through my lashes, I see crowds of ghosts, weaving in and out; in procession, in dance, in worship, in celebration; they spill like sand through hundreds of years. In the watery sunshine of this clear grey day, I see them dancing in the moonlight, chanting at the dark of the moon, still as the stones themselves as the sharp bright arrow of yet another Solstice dawn pierces the end of night.

The ghosts of the past melt one by one, until none are left and it is only me, standing alone with the tall, silent stones, the grass, the birds, the air, the sky, and the vast flowing waves of sacred power. My body is not alone, the world’s winds blow my skirt in spinning spirals and gust over my husband, gathering the silent stones into his camera for me to keep; he has brought me here. The world’s wind catches in my daughter’s fiery hair; the child of my body who understands the composition of my heart; she has opened this gateway, made this possible. She reaches out to hold my empty corporal hand. There are others walking the wide circle around the stones; people whose voices have become hushed, stilled; who walk slowly, aim cameras and gaze.

But the spirit wind cresting the wide green hill finds me standing quite alone, above the singing ground, beneath the wide grey sky. These stones spoke to me as a child; I heard them call from across the sea when I was very small; on a page cut from National Geographic they looked down from above my bed, whispering. Here in a stillness of green and grey is a dream - the dream of a gold eyed child; a child who sought mystery, who hungered for magic. I have come fifty years and across the sea to find that the mystical enchantment is something I understand to the center of my bones.

I feel the power. I have come in need. I ask without even forming words.

The world’s wind ruffles my hair; my husband and daughter have moved on and I stand here, in both worlds, alone. Alone where I was meant to come; and the spirit wind blows cleanly through me and leaves me clear.

Clear. Straight. Strong. Alone. Exalting.

And then I walk on.

I walk and walk and I keep walking.


©Edwina Peterson Cross
April 2004