Thursday Walk 18th April
ronet
She’s brought us here before. Several times. To this small field that’s been here since the ice retreated, and to that old stone barn built by hands long ago turned to bone, and to the path that leads to it and the flagstones laid so long ago they look like they grew there. The lambs, though, are new.
Soon Bealtaine will be upon us. In the old days bonfires would be lighted on Bealtaine Eve; the people would call on Bel, the god of light, to bring back the warmth of longer days. They’d drive the new lambs between the bonfires, and the next day would herd them to their summer pastures. There would be music that night, and dancing, and the young men and women would leap over the fires to purify themselves, and later they’d wander off into the night-dark fields. Come morning the women would wash their faces with the spring dew from the fields.
She’s brought us here before, it’s true. It’s also true we’ve been here for thousands of years. Tens of thousands. Our existence, like that of the lambs, is just a brief interval of welcome brightness between two eternities of dark. It’s all so lovely, that brightness, all so completely beautiful that when we see the new lambs in the ancient field it both fills the heart and leaves it empty.
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