Rick Urban
One afternoon in springtime, many years ago, my friend Simon made an announcement. In his softest and most charming voice he told his gathered family; father, mother, sisters and brother, that he would be spending his summer walking the Ley lines of Southern England. As this was a time before texting, I heard about the proposed adventure some time later in a pub. As it would be many years until the internet birthed wikipedia it fell to Simon’s elder brother to describe Ley lines to me. They are, as he explained, a series of ancient pathways, or routes, which connected sites of spiritual importance, he recounted how some people need to believe that everything lines up. He went on to mutter sardonically about Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor, and then he probably told me that Simon would be gored by a bull, mown down by a tractor, or arrested for trespassing and being a Northerner. That seems like something he’d have said but there was beer and it was many years ago, so I forget.
I grew up, and forgot all about the Ley lines. Then today looking at this picture, seeing how the exhaust from an aircraft left a contrail in the sky, and a horse bowed its Brâncuși head to munch, and its mane fell exposing the slope of its neck, and right at that moment a photographer clicked a button, I remembered again about how people need to feel that the important things line up.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
