Amy Hadden Marsh
From the Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England
Looking out the bus window, I couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black outside. No roads — except for the one upon which we were traveling and lit only by our headlights — no cars, no lights in the distance signaling habitation, just a curtain of black.
At 5:30 in the morning on the first day of astronomical winter, it’s dark on the Salisbury Plain. Two hundred of my friends and I piled aboard a Salisbury Reds double-decker bus, which ran the shuttle service to and from the city of Salisbury and the mystery of Stonehenge.
Stonehenge is older than time, as we know it, begun about 5,000 years ago. By comparison, the Salisbury Cathedral is new — completed in 1238. It houses the Magna Carta (yes, that Magna Carta), written in 1215.
It’s difficult to wrap my mind around such antiquities, especially in the context of the 21st century when a social media post is considered old news within hours. The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary next year and it seems like a joke. There are yew trees in Somerset, UK that are centuries older than my country. Well done, us.
Anyway, back on the bus, we are all headed for a winter solstice celebration at the ancient stones, one of four days of the year that humans are allowed inside the circle. Rebecca from London and Sarah, who lives in London but is from upstate New York, told me it was the main reason they were on the bus. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” they agreed. “We had to come.”
After about 45 minutes in the rolling darkness, the windows on the bus’ upper deck were fogged; a few passengers drew runes and oblique messages in the condensation. We alighted (a British term much more genteel than “debarked”) from the bus to a relatively hearty welcome from volunteers who had been up since 2am.
The conservation nonprofit English Heritage runs the site, which has a bustling visitor center about a mile and a half away from the actual henge. On solstice morning, I took one look at the queue in front of the cafe and headed for the stones. With my trusty walking stick, which I found in the woods of Avalon on Hallowe’en, I set off on a paved single lane through fields and woods intermittently lit by those giant spotlights that road crews use during night work. The shards of bright light through the mist made us all look like wizards… except for the phones.
Phones have become ubiquitous among the sarsens and bluestones at solstice. Even the banner on the English Heritage winter solstice webpage shows a pile of people inside the stones, trying to get a phone photo of the sunrise.
When I saw that, I thought, “Oh that’s not me. I’m just going to experience the stones.” Well, yeah, but after an hour or so, I couldn’t resist. One gets caught up in the raucous, laughing, singing, drumming crowd, screens and all. This year, we were 8,500 strong — elders, parents, toddlers, teens, 20-somethings, soccer moms, druids, a choir, Rastafari, witches, wizards, a Scot with his bagpipes and that guy nipping Jack Daniels from a flask.
No rain but cloudy so no sunrise beam pierced the stones, which did not, however, put any kind of a damper on the excitement of the prospect of lengthening days. Elders dressed in white cast a circle for a pagan ceremony that I couldn’t really hear. Snatches of song and scent drifted through the crowd. “Who’s burning weed?” said a woman behind me. Three of us turned around at once: “That’s not weed; it’s sage.” “How can you tell the difference?” she asked as she inched her way further into the pulsating crowd.
The towering stones are magnificent, bleached and worn by thousands of years of wind, sun and rain, and covered with a rare lichen, whose origin is unknown. Humans are told not to touch the stones but that goes out the window during solstice gatherings.
First of all, it’s unavoidable. Secondly, most people show up to touch the stones, believing energy can be passed between people and stones and vice versa. Others simply sit or stand on the altar stone to get a better view. I couldn’t help but wonder what the altar stone was used for all those eons ago.
Stonehenge will never reveal its secrets but it will hold the exuberance of winter solstice revelers from around the world. “The henge is alive,” observed a woman, looking out over the crowd at sunrise.