It is difficult to describe the feeling when we arrived at ‘our’ stone circle. The last time we had been there, we had spent hours in the landscape, just sitting and absorbing the feel and the vibrant serenity of the place. Looking at the devastation we found when we arrived to check the site prior to the workshop, it was as if that previous visit had been in a different time-frame altogether. As if centuries, rather than months, had slowly eroded the memory of joy and left the site bereft of presence. Or as if the hours we had spent had been passed in some ‘otherwhere’ that took no account of the passing of time in our world.

It is even more difficult to describe why it should be so. The stones, small and typical of Derbyshire’s circles, are always half-buried in the grass. The reeds that have begun to invade the site have been there all along, though not as prominent as at this time of year. The small offerings of coins, feathers and flowers were still present… yet there was something indefinably ‘missing’. As if the stones, that had so recently seemed awake and aware, had been put to sleep. It was profoundly shocking.

Our plan was to work in the little circle the following day, demonstrating how we thought it might have been used by the seer who kept the stones. As we walked around the overgrown lawn, we both came to the same conclusion… we would have to do something else too; try to help somehow…. though quite how we could do that, we didn’t know.

Our carefully laid plans were altered; we had no idea what we would end up doing there. All we could do would be wait and see, trusting, as always, that what was needed would come with the moment.

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