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Stonehenge, Avebury and Now
by Guy Spiro

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London is an old city. This is not news to anyone, but when you stand in Westminster Abby and see the tombs of famous people who lived and died long before Columbus, it starts to sink in. When you go to the British Museum and stand before the Rosetta Stone, along with all the other plunder of the Empire, you get even more of a sense of how fleeting our individual lives are. The time of human existence is the blink of an eye in a geologic sense but has been very long in any time frame that is relevant to you and me.

There are walking paths crisscrossing the British Isles. One can walk the length and breadth of the Isles on these paths. They once were main travel routes between cities and towns and were used by local people to get to market and to church. These rights of way are maintained to this day, and when you buy property that has a stretch of path on it, you live with and have to maintain it. People may walk across your pasture, up your driveway or wherever else the path may lead.

On one such path, as you come up over a rise, you can see a portion of Stonehenge off in the distance. This is the only way that I recommend anyone who can handle the walking see Stonehenge for the first time. Even though the area was forested in the time of the builders and you would not have been able to see it from that point, in the present time it is the only way to see it apart from modern encroachment. As you get closer you can see the tour buses, cars and crowds of people. Walking closer you find that the circle actually has two highways passing very close by, and what may be even more surprising is that it is in the middle of a sheep pasture.

Putting those distractions aside, one is struck by this monument from our distant past. Not much is really known about the builders. While I had joked that I would probably fall prey to Jerusalem Syndrome and turn into a Druid, the fact is that the Druids came much later and may not even have been aware of Stonehenge. And we don’t even really know what the Druids were up to, however much some may claim to. Who quarried these huge stones, and how did they carry and arrange them as they did? We do know that Stonehenge functions as a calendar and observatory of sorts, but we really do not know who these people were or what they did. All we can truly know is that roughly 5000 years ago they built this site, and it still evokes awe today.

Glastonbury is the purported burial site of Arthur and Guinevere. There are other sites that also claim to be the real Avalon and Camelot. Again no one really knows the truth. But you can stand on the place where, in 1278, Edward I believed he was moving the bones of Art and Gwen to a better location. The ruins of Glastonbury Abby remain, and you can walk among them wondering how Henry the VIII could have ordered its destruction in 1539. Readers of the Mists of Avalon can walk up the Glastonbury Tor. At the top there is a monument — the remains of the old church that sat up there — which now shares its space with the cows you may find scratching their shoulders on the stones. The Chalice Well is also near by, at the bottom of the Tor, and is a very peaceful and arguably sacred place. Glastonbury the town has a main street that reminds me very much of Old Town in Chicago in the ’60s, having every sort of new-agey store and attraction. The whole Glastonbury experience is very much about the ancient and the modern.

The Avebury Circles were started a bit later than Stonehenge and the site is very much larger. Coming into it from the south, you know you are there when the highway you are driving on passes between two of the stones. I found this to be almost incomprehensible, a heavily traveled road passing through this Neolithic sacred circle ... then I saw the town. The town of Avebury itself is built inside and outside of the circle. I was mildly outraged, until I realized that the town itself is over a thousand years old. There was precious little appreciation then for what the stones might mean, and we have to consider ourselves fortunate that it survived as well as it did during the more fanatical periods of Christianity.

This is when it all started to fall into perspective to me. Seeing the Roman Baths, the Wells Cathedral, the Neolithic fort foundation along the top of a very high ridge (up a slight incline according to our walking guide), with the Roman road sign a short distance away, and all of the other antiquities can easily overwhelm one with the history and ancientness of it all. And while all of this is fascinating and much may be learned from it, what remains of the utmost importance is what we do with our now. We may or may not build something that will still be around 5000 years from now, but if we will all do the very best we can in the present moment, then the world will be a better place for our having been here.