The Longest Day
Well it is a Monday!
Summer Solstice, Midsummer day or in Shetland the Simmer Dim. As the nights must be more dim down here in Strath than in the Northern Isles does that mean that we have a Dimmer Simmer Dim, or maybe just the Simmer Dimmer?
Call it what you want, I missed it anyway. I was still in bed when all that cosmic energy was zapping around.Dash it, I could have done with some of that. I'll have to wait another year before I can go dancing around the Touchstone Maze at sunrise. Or maybe I should be going tonight at sunset?
I think I'll just wait until next year and spend the time selecting a suitably ancient site rather just galumphing around the madey-uppy stone circle close to home.
The Touchstone Maze is an intersting place though, and I suppose all the ancient sites were new once upon a time. Situated in a wee clearing in the woods on the Cat's Back, the ridge running above the village, the maze is made up of concentric rings of stone based on a Pictish design. All laid out with due consideration to Autumnal equinox and Beltane sun down and what have you. I'm sure that you'll know of the kind of thing. Walking around the winding path between the slabs represents the journey of life, or something such. The maze was laid out using a variety of stones quarried from all over Scotland. There's a handy interpretation board so that you can tell your Torridonian sandstone from the basalt of Mull. Amongst the places from where the rocks were gathered are the Blue Hill quarry in Moray and a fine lump of conglomerate from Rova Head, Shetland. There's something a bit romantic in the notion that stone was hewn from the Auld Rock and transported hundreds of miles across land and sea to be reverentially sited in the Strath woods. Perhaps its a bit less romantic if you know that Rova Head is where Lerwick's sewage works is. But hey, the rock was there for a very long time before that, right?
Maybe the age of the site is irrelevant. Perhaps a new stone circle is just the thing to energise the New Agers. Or perhaps, as they say in Rova Head these days, it's just a pile of shite.
For Marie, by special request!
Summer Solstice, Midsummer day or in Shetland the Simmer Dim. As the nights must be more dim down here in Strath than in the Northern Isles does that mean that we have a Dimmer Simmer Dim, or maybe just the Simmer Dimmer?
Call it what you want, I missed it anyway. I was still in bed when all that cosmic energy was zapping around.Dash it, I could have done with some of that. I'll have to wait another year before I can go dancing around the Touchstone Maze at sunrise. Or maybe I should be going tonight at sunset?
I think I'll just wait until next year and spend the time selecting a suitably ancient site rather just galumphing around the madey-uppy stone circle close to home.
The Touchstone Maze is an intersting place though, and I suppose all the ancient sites were new once upon a time. Situated in a wee clearing in the woods on the Cat's Back, the ridge running above the village, the maze is made up of concentric rings of stone based on a Pictish design. All laid out with due consideration to Autumnal equinox and Beltane sun down and what have you. I'm sure that you'll know of the kind of thing. Walking around the winding path between the slabs represents the journey of life, or something such. The maze was laid out using a variety of stones quarried from all over Scotland. There's a handy interpretation board so that you can tell your Torridonian sandstone from the basalt of Mull. Amongst the places from where the rocks were gathered are the Blue Hill quarry in Moray and a fine lump of conglomerate from Rova Head, Shetland. There's something a bit romantic in the notion that stone was hewn from the Auld Rock and transported hundreds of miles across land and sea to be reverentially sited in the Strath woods. Perhaps its a bit less romantic if you know that Rova Head is where Lerwick's sewage works is. But hey, the rock was there for a very long time before that, right?
Maybe the age of the site is irrelevant. Perhaps a new stone circle is just the thing to energise the New Agers. Or perhaps, as they say in Rova Head these days, it's just a pile of shite.
For Marie, by special request!
posted by Ajax MacKindlers at 10:23 AM
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