A Thin Place?
I’m drawn to places that beguile and inspire, sedate and stir,
places where, for a few blissful moments I loosen my death grip on life,
and can breathe again.
It turns out these destinations have a name: thin places.*
~Eric Weiner**
The Clava Cairns, Bronze Age tombs near Inverness was another stop on the tour. I took a few photos and tried to spend some quiet time in this place of immense history. The sight has been used since before the pyramids. The cairns, standing stones, and stone circles are a few of the many prehistoric stone monuments - burial sites as well as sites with astronomical alignments - that are scattered across Ireland, Scotland, France (the earliest), and Scandinavia (and further).
They beautiful and mysterious. Yes, it's a thin place. It would be wonderful to sit and be in the moment or to spend some time watching the light and shadows. But it wasn't to be on this trip.
My photos are here, but are nothing special. I've included notes of additional information on this site and others. I think my favorite was the blog post about a family who walked to the site at Christmas (near the winter solstice) and that experience.
I can only end these comments by encouraging you to slow down. Don't rush. Be in the moment. Breathe.
Heaven and earth are separated by so little. And in some places, the thin places, the veil is lifted between the two.
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| This tree stands sentinel at the entrance to the site. |
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| We walked into this cairn as a group. |
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| Standing stones were scattered around the site, but in places standing in a circle around a cairn. |
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| I love how the trees - thousands of years younger - seem to surround and protect the stones. |
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| The site is protected by this stone wall on one site. |
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| Explanatory signs are sensitively designed. |
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| At many such sites some stones are incorporated into fence lines, here... |
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| ...and again here. |
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| Always take a few photos of the flora. |
We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images,
and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
NOTES:
* https://thinplacestour.com/what-are-thin-places/ (I recognize places mentioned in this post).
My earlier posts about thin places can be found here:
https://walkinthepark-padimus.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-thin-places.html
and here:
https://walkinthepark-padimus.blogspot.com/2017/07/thin-places-revisited.html
** https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/travel/thin-places-where-we-are-jolted-out-of-old-ways-of-seeing-the-world.html
*** More about the Clava Cairns:
https://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/clava-cairns-p245611
https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/clava-cairns/
https://www.odysseytraveller.com/articles/standing-stones-britain-europe/
**** Winter Solstice Alignment:
https://modulouniverse.com/2018/12/24/the-winter-sun-at-clava-cairns/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brú_na_Bóinne (Newgrange)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f0UkPgC8cU (Drombeg)
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