Up on the Hills

Up on the Hills   22 June 2011          10am.

A little after eight o’clock, on mid-summer evening we walk on the hills; the sun is shining through a haze, the light is extraordinarily beautiful; the great headlands barely visible; the noisy wind swishes through the bleached seed heads of the grasses, moving them like long hair on an animal. The wind whips my hair too, across my face and into my eyes. It is cool, almost bracing. A few walkers wander nearby but it is not the weather for strolling, and impossible to talk. It is not a balmy mid-summer night, it is not Shakespeare and Puck making magic with a fairy queen; it is Stonehenge and wild incantations up here on the hills. Sheep graze steadily on, unconcerned, but  ‘Dog’ is excitable and skittish; maybe she senses powerful spells in the air.