Glastonbury

Who’d A Thought It.

Besides being the name of my favorite pub in town, who’d a thought there’d be a Mediterranean spring-almost-summer in Glastonbury? he sun blazing high in the sky, the earth cracked in my backyard, the need to water newly planted basil, tomatoes and parsley – the need to water in England.  Patches of grass in the Abbey orchard beginning to turn brown: we’re now past the vibrant full bloom of early spring’s colors…I’m not complaining. I’m just craving olives and tzatziki and stuffed grape leaves as the sun brings out the copper in my skin. Max and I aim for walks in the shade at the Abbey and along Wick Hollow –easier along Wick Hollow covered in the arch of bending limbs – the old guardians.  Wavy grasses in the orchard at the Abbey nearly 4 feet, or how many meter tall now? Blossoms from the apple trees dropped and mulching on the ground; young fruit growing in their place. Helicopters overhead – the familiar sound of choppers in the air in unlikely concert with the songs of sparrows, pigeons, and crows and the occasional duck quack. Lily pads with blooms the colour of pickled turnips (the turnips so tasty when eaten with falafels), float on the surface of the pond at the Abbey where carp feed underneath – gaping mouths with tails flapping.Max once again tries to sniff the Nettles.  I yank his leash; he doesn’t seem to mind the sting but hours later he will go into a kind of asthmatic wheeze and cough. The town side of the Tor is shaded now; just before noon, late spring with the sun almost overhead, and trees in full leaf spread across Chalice Hill. Buttercups reach up, still, now alongside tall silver weeds. I think this will be a Mediterranean summer where I’ll eat basil and tomatoes from my garden and small cucumbers I hope to find at the farm market in the center of town. It’s not that I would mind an English summer, that’s why I’m here – but the light of today’s sun exposes another longing; one to be where the sea is cerulean blue and the sand white, but here with this mostly still lush green, I feel these overlapping lives in unlikely but welcome concert.

 

They’re called Drumlins. Their existence was unknown to me before I arrived in the UK. An egg shaped hill created from glacial movements, they’re apparently worldwide or at least in ‘formerly glaciated areas’ but I came to a small island in the north Atlantic to discover them. “Are they burial mounds?” I ask. I’m oriented towards the esoteric and feel there’s room for exploration here. “No.” being the answer given, I’m then educated on the intricacies of ice and ancient land shifts. “Are you sure they’re not man made?”

Crag and Tail definition: a tadpole-shaped landform developed by glacial erosion of rocks on unequal resistance. The crags are cliffs developed in near-cylindrical masses of strong rock. The tail is formed in softer rocks sheltered from erosion in its lee.

My well-informed neighbor and I continue our drive towards the Somerset levels on our way back from Bristol–we take the scenic route, which includes clustered villages, mountain goats on cliff outcrops in the Mendip Hills, then sloped fields that look spring green to me even in winter, but the air has the unmistakable bite of February. I haven’t been outside without a scarf since mid-October and I mostly don’t even notice I have it on. Didn’t I wear scarves in the states? I don’t remember it being as natural as it is now, like grabbing my keys or putting on my fabulous llama socks. Hell it was colder in North Carolina and New York is brutal by comparison. But what about this scarf I’m always wearing? My friend Todd says he’ll stop calling me on skype as soon as he sees me wearing it inside the house. The line now drawn, he goes on to describe how the offense on his eyes might look, as he waves his hands around in mock French knot and double sided twist gestures. But there are no tight knots or twists today, it lays loose around my neck as our drive continues past farms, peat works, and old stone structures. My mind needs to rest. I want to close my eyes in the gleam of late afternoon winter sun and press my face against this soft weave. I’m content to be a quiet passenger through these villages and fields I breathe through me without question or curiosity; the inhale and exhale of land and space and people, a misty vapour centuries old that infuses the present, and future glaciers melt where grass now grows.