Therapy

[smokingboot]

Joining the others at Cairnpapple we thinned out the rosebay willowherb that's been encroaching all around the site. The weather was so good you could see the land at its most beguiling, sheep and the hills and the bridges over the Forth, all green and sunshine sparkling! The air was clear and fresh without being cold, and I realised that all I had needed was out. I generally don't like weeding because I want anything that's alive to stay that way, but a little judicious clearance and we could see how many blaeberries and heathers grow given a little room; the views alone were a cure. My low mood evaporated.

The cairn was open, so I just popped down there to see the major burial place. Gosh this has been so unsympathetically protected! The outside is a good reconstruction but within, it's a bunker-like dome to keep the old stones safe and that's it! The Romans called it Media Nemeton, central sanctuary, linking it to the druids. 3500 years ago the neolithic farmers lit their fires in the area, stone axes found in fragments from the Lake District and North Wales. Then earthworks and henge followed and some burials occurred right up until the early Christian era.




She was special, this woman covered with flowers, grave goods alongside her; bowls, some kind of club, a mask worn in death. These pics can't evoke the feeling of the place. Caught up in it all, I climbed backwards up the ladder, remembering the etiquette of never turning one's back on royalty, which is crazy because her bones are long gone and we know nothing about her status beyond the fact that she had some. But something there felt like majesty, and if imagination led me too far, I'll forgive it for a sunny day. I was captured for a moment, and then the land above drew me back into light.