"Happy Summer Solstice sister.." Avebury 5am 21.06.09

It was a last minute decision. I was meant to go to work on Saturday morning. I called in sick instead and joined my flatmate on his trip to Avebury, a small countryside village in the county of Wiltshire.
Avebury does not count more than few hundreds inhabitants. There is a pretty Norman church, a school and a pub, stretched along the main road. The horizon is made of fields and scattered trees here and there.
What made me travel to Avebury? Its amazing stone circle and those pagan rituals of the summer solstice. And the need for a change of scenery, even just for one night.
Being an improvised decision, I spent the day trying to get ready for it. With no planning ahead, I did not have much of an idea of what I was meant to bring with me.
Tent, sleeping bag, food, drinks, toothbrush, warm clothes&socks, wellies (you never know, it may rain!).. what else.. yes paracetamol!! There is always the chance of a headache, especially when you have been drinking all night long, waiting for the dawn! Ok, I was sorted, at least with what i considered the essential to my survival.

We hit the road mid afternoon that same day. Once the tent was up in the campsite, we went to the pub were I met some of my flatmate’s friends. All around us there were drums and guitars playing, voices singing (some of them already quite drunk), people dancing and waiting for the sunset, when the first ritual took place.
We all gathered around one of the inner circles of the henge. Masks, fire, music, dances and dancers performed the circle of life. As the darkness fell over Avebury and the stone circle, the light of the fires gave us a taste of antiquity and primitive age.
And then we waited for the dawn. It has been a long, cold, damp, drunk, funny night.

4.55 am: back to the stone circle. We all waited for the sunrise.. but no sun popped out from the cloudy morning. The druid greeted anyways the dawn and the four elements, thanking them for having been benevolent and asking them to come back to us so that we could live.
We were all in a circle, turning our backs facing the cardinal points four times, one for each element.

While walking along the henge and passing by those huge rocks, I considered how pagan rituals have been long discredited and set aside in order to let various Gods lead the way. Water, air, earth and fire are probably all we need to survive. Without them there would be no life and we would not be here.
May be those are the only gods we should worship.