From Sacred Landscapes to Warrior
Society - 081916
The room where a had my dream
I had a dream while staying in Paris
during the summer of 2013. There were no visuals, purely physical and
emotional sensations. I was facing a great danger. Though I couldn't
see it, I knew it was in front of me and manifest by a massive and
strong enemy. It was a powerful and oppressive presence. I also knew
that there were people behind me – people who were with me in the
struggle – whatever it might be. I had no sense of whether we would
win or lose. What I did know is that we had to have courage in the
face of the enemy, no matter how afraid we might be. The unknown
“battle” was not engaged in the dream. It was a premonition.
Yarrow in the glen
After I left Paris, I went to Scotland.
Some of my ancestors are from Scotland – Campbells and Hutchinsons
who came to the United States not long before the U.S. Civil War. I
had planned the trip carefully because I wanted to see as much as I
could in a short time without a car. I researched where I might find
standing stones and cairns to which I could walk. I found Kilmartin
in Kilmartin Glen.
The glen – valley – carved by a glacier and its runoff contains relics of human use going back almost 5,000 years. It began as a ritual burying ground before being used later for human habitation and agriculture.
An explanation of the sites in Kilmartin Glen - with my reflection
The glen – valley – carved by a glacier and its runoff contains relics of human use going back almost 5,000 years. It began as a ritual burying ground before being used later for human habitation and agriculture.
An old spelling of Campbell in the cemetery by the church in Kilmartin
Kilmartin Glen's designation is “very
remote rural” with a population under 900. But it is on a local bus
line! I did a lot of my traveling on bus lines which are not used by
tourists, sometimes on one lane roads. Because they don't run often,
linking my modes of travel was limiting, but well worth it.
My window at the Kilmartin Inn
I stayed at the Kilmartin Inn – an
inn upstairs and a pub downstairs – with a commanding view of the
glen. I could only stay two nights – not nearly enough to see 350
monuments in a 6-mile radius. One of my goals is to get back there
for at least four more nights!
The view of the glen from my room
On my one full day there, I walked on
the path that runs through the valley along a linear cemetery of
cairns (burial sites under piles of stone) and standing stones. It
was a beautiful, warm day. I was lucky to have only a couple of days
of misty weather during my time in Scotland. I had the path to myself
the entire day.
The path by the thistles
As I approached one of the cairns, I
stopped by a stand of thistles. I don't know what attracted me, since
they were small, pale and dusty – not the impressive ones, large
and bright - I'd seen elsewhere. I realized that I hadn't yet taken a
photo of thistles, so I took one of this scraggly bunch.
The pale dusty thistles
As I turned
to head back to the cairn, I had such a strong sense of deja vu,
that I was completely disoriented and almost fell over. I was
thinking, “But I've never been here, I've never been here!” As I
reoriented myself, it dawned on me that my dream in Paris had taken
place in this spot in the glen. The feeling was so strong that I have
never doubted it. It had been a precognitive dream, but I would
eventually find it to be so much more.
The cairn
The rest of the day
was uneventful, though deeply satisfying, spent among the cairns and
standing stones and small “castles.” The standing stones I saw
were in a sheep field. In Scotland, you can walk into such
privately-owned fields, as long as you close the gate behind you. It
was the only place where I encountered people.
One of the standing stones
Much of the area is
privately owned by corporations. Because of deposits from glaciers
and their runoff, the area exists on gravel terraces – the town
itself sits on a terrace above the floor of the glen – and there is
a large gravel quarry nearby. The hills are owned by timber companies
and much of Scotland (whose hills have been denuded many times) is
covered with non-native trees (mostly Sitka Spruce) planted in neat
rows next to clear cut areas. That is all clearly visible in
Kilmartin Glen. Many of the historic sites in the area are on
corporate property, though still accessible to the public.
Cup and ring markings - I bought a locally made necklace with these markings and wear it often
That night at the
pub, the owner gave me tastes of different single-malt whiskies –
so I could compare one without peat and ones with different levels of
peat (some of Kilmartin Glen is a peat bog). People told stories
around the fire. A young couple was hiking the length of Scotland.
They had pitched their tent across the street on a patch of lawn next
to the church cemetery. No one ever told them they couldn't. Imagine!
We all sat around with our whisky and listened to their adventures.
I had
to leave early the next day on the local bus to catch a ferry for the
next leg of my trip and I thought, only occasionally, of my deja
vu/dream experience in the glen.
It wasn't until I got home a few weeks later and began researching
the area further that I began to understand its significance. I
ordered a couple of Scottish books not available here – one from
the museum in Kilmartin. A quote on the flyleaf says, “Visiting the
Kilmartin valley without this book in your rucksack would be very
silly indeed.” Well, my visit hadn't been “silly,” but it would
have been greatly enhanced by the information in the book. There were
few signs in the area and I had, apparently, walked right past some
fabulous sites. Possibly setting me up for having to go back? The
glen was described as having begun as sacred space and having evolved
as a symbol of power.
The second book is
a collection of essays on Argyll – seat of Clan Campbell – of
which Kilmartin is a part. One of the essays by Trevor Cowie is
titled “The Bronze Age: from Sacred Landscapes to Warrior Society.”
Now I felt that I was on to something linking my dream to the glen.
Kilmartin Glen is one of those places where we can trace the change
from matriarchal societies rooted in reverence of the natural world
to patriarchal societies rooted in exploitation of the gifts of
nature. It was an easy leap for me to imagine myself in that dream as
being among the women who must have fought (in many ways on many
fronts) bravely to inhibit that march to patriarchy. I do not make an
easy leap to past lives (and haven't), but I did and do feel a
special thrill to imagine the possibility that my female ancestors
(predecessors of the Campbells) were active in that struggle and that
the struggle is somewhere in my genes.
Description of a cairn with the woman in the center
I had been
satisfied with those imaginings until recently (and here I go
political on you). Now we may be at the culmination of that struggle our foremothers began so many thousands of years ago. Now is the time (or, possibly, past the time) for everyone to understand that the culture of war an exploitation could have brought humankind to an evolutionary dead end. Thus, the current presidential election has brought my dream and the struggle it represents directly back to me. I find
myself constantly in conversations about Hillary Clinton's candidacy
– both as the first woman candidate from one of two “major”
parties and as the “only choice” to defeat Donald Trump. It is
not my intent to have that full conversation here, but her candidacy
is very relevant to the dream. I now find myself standing up for the
values for which I imagine my very ancient “mothers” fought. And
that struggle is being waged against a woman who represents the
strongest and most inhumane patriarchy that has ever existed. My
“mothers” did not win and, interestingly, the evidence of their
lives was obliterated for millennia by climate change that brought
the bogs which covered the cairns and stones. And that loss is still
seen in their glen in the form of gravel quarries and clear cuts.
I do not think we
will win this time either. And, sadly, it is a woman, finding her
power in modeling her actions on those of men, who will continue to
lead us pell mell to what could be the end of humankind, who will
rape the earth, will build more and better nuclear weapons, and who
will wage war on people the world over. I am grateful to those who
struggle against this with me. I feel them around me as I did in the
dream. And, as in the dream, the enemy is huge, powerful and
oppressive. And we may not win, but we must try.
I have begun a
series of poems (primarily unfinished, so far) about my time in the
glen. Here is one of them.
Scottish Glen, Kilmartin
by Susan Lamont
Like mummers moving
through our dreams,
souls incant ancient
songs, long stolen
from the mouths of
silenced bards. Where poems
of praise once wove
through hazel, oak and elm, now
sentineled shadows of
foreign spruce stand guard.
No bones remain, but
memory of footsteps, flesh to earth,
haunts the spirit path,
links cairns and
standing stones, dark
permanence the peat held fast
through time 'til man
reclaimed this earth for fire.
A constellation of stones
announces
the rising moon. Archaic
script of ciphers,
the alchemy of stone and
simple tools,
speak ceremony. Bearing
the gift of ritual,
shades of women move
unshod
between heather and
stream, delicate
and deliberate as water
birds, frail
against the tide of
newly-minted bronze,
wielded by men wedded to
conquest and keen blade.
Today, under warming sky,
a stream meanders
where once a torrent
roared, a glen
swept wide and bare by
rage of ice melt.
Dull blue thistles sway
from press
of bees, slow and full in
their work.
Dusty umbels of yarrow
lace the path
through this trace of
glacial scour.
Earth holds her secrets,
faint as shadows
of ancient ferns pressed
in stone, elusive
as the sheen of raven's
blue-black wing.
Cleared by weapon and axe,
the hills look down,
denuded. Along their
scars, the sea lochs furthest reach
begins to stretch, flexing
muscles as strong
as glaciers. Midst this
calamity of grief,
who
will bury our parched bones against a rising tide?
Great poem! And you get some kind of line break award- really inventive and helpful.
ReplyDeleteI do love that country.
Thanks, Scott. I love playing with line breaks! My workshop leader, Terry Ehret, emphasizes that.
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