The English countryside is exactly as you would imagine it to be from books, paintings, movies, and fairy tales. The early-morning sun positively glistened off the ponds, brooks, and rivers. Hedged fields of green grass were often speckled with fluffy white sheep. On a long, dirt road that stretched up into the distance an old man with a cane made his way slowly up to a small house silhouetted alongside wild oak and birch trees. I never fully understood the phrase "rolling hills" until I took this trip; the landscape looked like the sea might in a storm with great swells of waves tumbling into one another. And at the crest of a particularly tall and circular mound of earth sat Stonehenge.
The first thing that struck me about it, admittedly, was how small it was. But that thought quickly faded as I did a 360 view of the land surrounding it. I couldn't have appreciated it in theory, you can't really ask the question until you are there: how on earth did they get those massive stones there? It is literally right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps what is most fascinating is how little we know about it. It might be a monument to a sun-god, as it seems to have been built in order to reflect the rising and setting of the sun. Then again its multi-circular construction might have made it a part of a more complicated astrological calendar. Question after question flooded my head about the kind of people who would have built, seen, lived around, and celebrated this structure. According to one of my friends on the trip all of the buildings we hold so dear in our modern society and praise as pinnacles of technological achievement would crumble in a thousand years' time if the human race was wiped out. The chemicals we use to build would cause the structures to disintegrate, but what would still be standing would be Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and the Mayan Temple. In other words, all those structures created from the simplest and purest parts of the earth. To have stood so close to something that was so old and so shrouded in mystery was awe-inspiring. The human race is so small, and time is a funny thing.
Back on the bus and on our way to Bath we began to see cottages that looked as though they were hundreds of years old, and castles and mansions that were most certainly hundreds of years old. Most of them were laden with ivy and surrounded by grounds that, had it been spring, would have held bountiful gardens. We stopped outside of Bath Abbey, a breathtaking monastery built in the seventh century. Over the years it has fallen into and out of states of disrepair, and each century has left its mark in some way when restoring it through ornate decoration. We visited the Royal Crescent, the Circus, and the modern spa that uses the hot-spring in its treatments, but the real money was in the thing that gives the city its name; the Roman Baths.
10,000-odd years ago a great deal of rain fell in the area of Bath. It seeped down into the limestone below and was later pushed back up through the cracks. When it emerged into the open air it was hot, bubbling, and full of minerals. The Romans found it and though that it must be the home of their goddess Minerva, and so they built a temple for her around it. Over the two thousand years since then, people have come to bathe and heal in the same place. Ironically if you tried to take a bath in the temple's water now you'd get very sick, but it's a nice thought and prompted yet another series of reflections in my head about human history and time.
A lot of Bath's charm also comes from the beautiful architecture constructed during the Georgian period. Modern day clothes and cars seem out of place in the cobblestone streets and beside the magnificent buildings. It is at once full of history and in the same instant timeless. It has the quirks and personability of a beach town without the tackiness. It's a well preserved and majestic monument without the sterilization. It's Italy in England. Another thing that struck me about it was the respect for spirituality and mysticism. Despite the many influences of vastly differing religions (roman mythology, Catholicism, etc...), I found no feeling of hostility between those religions. Rather it seemed more open and accepting, as a place of healing should be.
Whatever walk of spirituality or philosophy one might claim, Bath remains steeped in human life, and there is something "greater-than" about that too. You can almost feel a deep vibration of all of those lives connecting and leading you to that moment, as though every footstep on the millennia-old streets were accounted for and now supported yours. It felt painful to leave so suddenly, I felt as though I could have lived there forever. As we drove away from the extraordinary city a deep red sunset emerged from the could cover and pierced the sky along the horizon. It was a perfect ending to such a meaningful experience.
