Summer Solstice. Again. Like it is every year. And like every year it is such a night when we would put aside our normality and would drive 60 miles to get mixed with a crowd of same weird people gathered together in a small place with the strange stones just to greet the sun in a moment of rising.
This time we left home pretty later – 23:00 and the road we took was pretty easy. So we arrived in Stonehenge before the midnight. It was a very cold night, despite of boiling hot day. Only 8-9 C I’ve seen on forecast. But at least it wasn’t rain like last year and at least the skies were clean, and there was this moon…Oh, that moon…full yellow saucer in the sky. So close that it seemed – stretch out your arms and pull her close to your soul…There was something in her, that made me expect the witch to fly on her broomstick across the round shape of the moon…
Ancient stones were in plenty in the place where I went last Monday. And the crowd has been pretty much “stoned” too – this is how it always happened on such events..but the amazing thing was - despite of all those hippies, new agers, witches, druids and other colourful characters being in the condition of total "inhalation" (they smoke the weed so that the whole stone circle of the monument has been in a smoky mist...I went through the middle of it and my head swirled as if I smoked the weed myself)...despite of that, there was no violence, no fights, no aggravation, nobody hurt no one...nobody stepped on no one, even by accident, even when they've been walking like a zombies, completely glazed, they've been walking carefully, peacefully and purposeless as well...I so liked watching them...you can’t really see that many of such at once in any other places. But...Summer Solstice in Stonehenge was not about smoking weeds and sniffing white stuff...
It was a crowd there, as usual (we've been attending summer solstice nights for the 4th year already)...maybe slightly less, to be precise, as many of those who visited last times, didn't come this year - some were not impressed, others - couldn't make it on a working day or couldn't make it because of a distance...and some only wish to see it once and used the opportunity last times...so...yes, the crowd was smaller this year...but the process itself and mostly - the aura it creates, have been no less powerful despite of less human forces have been actively involved...
The merry crowd has been having fun already, when we came. The restless drummers…the dancing people dressed in flowers and tree branches…druids performing their rituals…all happy, all excited…all in anticipation of the main moment of a day…
It was about 2 hours before the sunrise when I've got there...and all that time i was standing in the crowd, by the Stones...feeling so alone and so together...it is hard to explain, to let you feel what I felt...like - to be in a crowd of an aliens, other dimensions, outer spaced species - see them, feel their presence, but not getting in any contact at all, neither wish to...I do like this solitude in the crowd...
There is also that tradition here - on the night of a summer solstice, the couples come to meet the sun together...they say - you'll get to be fine tuned with each other after such night...so there were a lot of couples there, who just stand in silence, in the arms of each other, motionless, whole night, awaiting...certain magic was in their embrace...certain power...there were so many couples standing there…I hope they’ve got what they came for…
While surrounded with the strangers...strangers that you feel like brothers...side by side...shoulder to shoulder...all waiting for this one moment...moment of the birth of a new day...not a special one, but one of many...special for that all of us came to meet him that night...
The screams of excitement, drumming, the cacophony of various strange music instruments, pipes and others, the applauses – all to greet the Sun, that finally made his appearance at about 4:58am. It was a fantastic view indeed – the valley right in front of the hill, from which the sun was rising, has been full of morning mist, so dense and so white – it looked like a clouds came down from the skies to make a comfy bed, the one that makes you want to run and jump right into it…so soft…so fluffy, so thick…and then the sun appeared…splashing dazzling lightenings into the richness of a blue sky…breathtaking view…
After the sun has finally rise to the joy of those awaiting, the place somehow lost it’s magical meaning and turned into the normal self, the great ancient monument site with a crowd of weird people lost between the thousands years of history, seemed totally out of context there. The same ones that felt like brotherhood the very same morning…
