Having just got back from another trip to Neolithic Orkney I thought I'd post a few photos of the wild flowers near the Neolithic henge and standing stones of the Ring of Brodgar. The ring of stones stands on a small isthmus between the
Lochs of Stenness and
Harray. Here are some of the wild flowers that blossom in these northern isles in August. They contribute to the stark beauty of Orkney and delight us by their presence.
1st -Looking from the Ring toward Loch Harray
2nd - Heather and stones that form a part of the Ring of Brodgar
a carpet of heather
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| Lesser Celandine Stars |
1st - looking toward Loch Stenness
2nd - a view from the henge
wild flowers 1
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| Toward Loch Stenness |
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wild flowers 2
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| Orkney landscape |
It certainly looks like a place worthy of a UNESCO World Heritage designation, AA!
ReplyDeleteThe flowers that bloom in what I assume to be a short Summer must be all the more sweeter to year-around residents--such color reminds me of the inlets you find in rural parts of counties north of San Francisco near the beaches like Drakes' Bay, Stinson Beach and Bodega Bay. (The latter being the location site of the Hitchcock thriller "The Birds".) But I don't wish to undermine the uniqueness of this area and all those different settlers and invaders who have already left what mark they have and left us to ponder our own existence and the real measure of the common idea of "progress".
I am always fascinated by the "rings" to be seen in rural locales around the British Isles. One wonders how they were ever brought into the area and put upright---much of the island's geology is redstone according to the helpful Wikipedia entry you linked to. Does anyone know if the giant sentinels of the distant past were locally quarried, or somehow shipped from the mainland? Perhaps we can only speculate on how ingenious our distant ancestors were.
I wonder if the Celtic Christians of the early "Dark Ages" used any of the islands as a remote spot for preserving their idea of the sacred?
Thanks for these glimpses into a off-track spot in one of the less-visited parts of the British Isles, AA.
Thanks Doug. I wish I had seen those places you mention when I was in the San Francisco area, but I roamed off to the south rather than the north because I had taken a copy of Jack Kerouac's book The Big Sur which I resolved to read at The Big Sur....which I duly did. The first time I'd read it I was working on the railway as a train guard in England... at the back of a freight train by the glow of stove, the second time it was where I was visited by a baby deer whose mother patiently waited just across the road while it came over for a closer look at a person one evening before moving on down Highway One, a lasting testament to the New Deal. The deer were going north while was going south to look at the Esalen Institute and to think about Gestalt Therapy and all the stuff I'd studied 25 years earlier....... on the subject of Christianity in Orkney I found this piece from The Independent in 2000
ReplyDelete"One of early Christianity's most remote outposts has been discovered on a tiny island in the Orkney archipelago, 45 miles north of the Scottish mainland.
It is the most northerly early Christian monastery ever found, and is thought to have been used as a base for missionary activity - and for servicing the needs of Stylite hermits who marooned themselves on Orkney's rock stacks. When the monks arrived - probably from Northumberland - sometime between 650 and 750, they would have had the task of converting the native pagan Pictish population."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/early-christian-outpost-found-in-remote-orkneys-710872.html
There is also some tenuous connection to Scotland's first saint ...Saint Ninian I understand, but I'm not sure about how factual that is.Thanks for commenting Doug :-)
Thanks for the very interesting article on the early Christian monastic community in the Orkneys, AA.
DeleteI've driven down Highway One from the Bay Area down and about Big Sur. I'm just now re-reading Kerouac's classic, "On the Road", by chance which was his first trip to the West Coast.
Ironically, that incredible natural wonder (destination spot and home to poets and the counter-culture intelligensia) is fairly close to the great edifice of egotism that is Hearst Castle, the secluded and over-the-top home of media baron W.R. Hearst, the inspiration for Orson Welles "Citizen Kane". I think I was was more charmed by standing down by the ocean and watching the playful sea otters along the coast than I was by the wonders of the castle. I have always found watching fawns and mother deers (and said deer watching me back) to be a rare and calming experience.
I first saw this magnificent region as a four year old with my parents, and then absorbed on my own later as an adult. (The Castle was given to the state of California for a park in 1960, a sort of National Trust deal.)
I never went to Hearst Castle, I considered it but decided to listen to the cry of sea lions in the fog that day instead, I'm a sucker for wildlife I'm afraid. It was good re-reading The Big Sur whilst there just chilling for a few days and reading the book. I can't remember whether On The Road or Dharma Bums was the first Kerouac I read but by the early 70s I had read most of them I think. I always admired his reportage and still hold it in very high regard. I cut my literary teeth on the Beat Generation, although at school obviously we had done all the great writers from Chaucer to Dickens and I had been in a few Shakespeare plays in minor roles on my way through school too....but I have always thought that education is largely wasted on children and it took me until my post-school teens to realise the pleasure of autodidacticism and reading what you want, when you want about whatever you choose. The Big Sur is a good place for a 4 year old to see Doug, the natural environment is pristine 'steam cleansed' by the Pacific fog I think ....and all that lies within it, like deer big and small and blue jays [well western scrub jays actually] aplenty - a cornucopia indeed Doug.
ReplyDeleteBig Sur must certainly be a perfect place for reading Kerouac's impressions of the place and time, AA. The State Park Service and Coastal Commission in California I believe has done a reasonably good job maintaining that area from what I have heard from my friends who have visited the area more recently.
DeleteI think you are quite right about education and the young. I remember reading many of the authors you likely encountered in school in my "British Lit" class in high school. I was lucky to have an older lady from England teaching the course at my small-town high school in Florida. I think her teaching methods were close to the way state schools taught kids in the UK, but I can't be sure. Anyway all high school libeal arts for me was more of a introductory or cursory experience; there were too many authors to get to and we spent too much time on some and not enough on others. (This was true of my American Lit class, taught by lady with a sour attitude whose name I have gladly forgotten.)
Miss Lytle, on the other hand, did instill in me a interest in several authors like Dickens, Swift, Shaw, and Oscar Wilde (mostly Irish chaps now that I think about it) while other writers we went through were ones I only appreciated later---Shakespeare being the big one, of course, but also George Eliot and my favorite modern English novelist, Graham Greene.
As fart as Dickens goes, I should say my father's favorite novel was "A Tale of Two Cities" and of course I believe I read that and "Oliver Twist" before I actually covered the work by "The Inimitable" we read in high school.
My favorite book in high school was "The Grapes of Wrath".
To us, Miss Lytle (the high school teacher) biggest claim to fame was that she had actually met Ernest Hemingway once at a reception at the British Embassy in Havana during World war Two. She said Hemingway was on his best behavior and was very patient with those at the event who gathered as he "held court", aas she put it. I'd like to imagine Miss Lytle--a stork-like woman a bit like Vanessa Redgrave, only more politically subdued--was actually working for MI-5 or 6 or something while in the diplomatic service, but more likely she was just a secretary. But whatever she did, she was a good teacher and a strong anti-fascist and after what more can a kid hope for in a underfunded state school in the American South? :-)
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on education and personal background, AA.