Spirit of Place

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nigelswift N
nigelswift Jun 29, 2003 12:43:33
Replying to FourWinds

Well, if he meant one of those on Wychbury Hill or Bredon Hill for instance, then I would report similar feelings. Not in terms of “auras” of course, they’re not my thing, and may not be his, but for my own- what I would regard as – joined up reasons. On the basis of my own reasons the fact that a place was soaked in blood, ancient or modern, would not have any relevance and only the surroundings and landscape would since that’s all I think I’m picking up. On any measure those places are pretty nice. Whether there were ancient people that thought that I can't say but think it likely and whether anyone ever held those places to be "worth defending" rather than just "good defensively" I also can't say, but think it possible. But if I'm wrong on both counts then, as I’ve said elsewhere, it’s nature and aesthetics that rings my bell and not all such places contain ancient sites (though an awful lot do).

M morfe
morfe Jun 29, 2003 20:35:28
Replying to nigelswift

Grandpa Morfe is from Bredon! I have to scatter his ashes up there when he passes onwards and upwards :-( In fact that was one of the last times I went there, for him to show me 'his' places from boyhood. It puts a lump in my throat, and Bredon puts a lump in my pants, what a place! There IS no finer place to spend a lazy late July day basking in the buzzing non-clamouring-glamour of the Shire? maybe these places are so simply a connection with ourancesrtal urges, the lookouts, the surveying of weather, change, good or bad, the power of a rise in the land, the changing vegetation, the gnarled ancient dwarfed hawthorns that seem to live forever up there, yet rot and die in the Avon valley. Hills are for dreamers and schemers, hills are the visible signs of Mother Earth's birthing process? Changeable over millenia, imperceptibly, yet in the human lifespan, always there, always the same? That's a sanctuary in itself?