If you ask someone on the street to name a sacred site I’m sure that Stonehenge would be a common choice along with the Pyramids, the Vatican, or Westminster Abbey.

Stonehenge was at the top of my must see list.   I was dying to get there.   I didn’t go the first time I went to England.   That was a family vacation, still filled with sacred sites, but not the right time for Stonehenge.   I wanted to have my first encounter with one of the most famous spots on Earth to be special.  I had heard people say, “it’s not special, just some rocks, not as big as I expected”.   I was not deterred and I wanted my first glimpse to be sacred.

I convinced my husband Hamilton that we needed to go to England and Scotland.  It didn’t take much convincing because the “motherland” as we refer to it, was at the top of our list. “ Oh, and by the way Dear, you are going to drive.”   He took the challenge and armed with GPS, maps, atlas and me as navigator we survived our first roundabout.   I had planned the start of our trip around Stonehenge.   I made the special reservations to get inside, which you have to do before hours otherwise you just get to be behind the chain.   I wanted in.   We had a reservation for 8 AM as close a day to fall equinox 2009 as I could get.

The night before our reservation we stayed in Salisbury and rose early to head to the Salisbury Plain to get our first glimpse.  It was a beautiful sunrise making everything pink and gold.   The security guard let us in and along with about 20 other people I walked under the road toward the pilgrimage site I had longed to see for so many years.   I walked on ahead of everyone and for a one glorious minute I was the only person standing surrounded by those stones.  They welcomed me.  I took my time and slowly walked around greeting each stone in turn.  I marveled at their height, their beautiful mossy coats, their “ancientness”.

Birds were sitting on top of the stones calling in the early morning light.  I could not have been happier.  I just breathed in the beauty of the sun and meadows and those beautiful wise stone, wiser than I could ever be. What had the seen?  What did they know?   I plucked up a bit of the blowing lamb’s wool as a talisman and gave thanks with an offering.   I spent the last 10 minutes of my time there sitting in that circle of stones filling myself up with the glory of it all.   As my wise teacher says “we are in the glory now”.