Another Time, Another Place

Part 2 - Overlay

                                                         Clava Cairns

The dense fog overlaying the wild pastures carried a chill that was felt even in the enclosed space of the small bus. Moss-covered stone walls rolled past us on either side of the narrow track as we drove along the ancient roads. Our guide, Rob, was doing his best to set the mood; describing the hard life and customs of the people who had lived and died here some four thousand years earlier.

Some of our fellow travelers, however, seemed to be trying to lighten that same mood. A low murmur of chatter punctuated with bursts of laughter competed with our narrator. I don't blame them. There was something disquieting about the fog in this remote locale. It caressed our windows as we slowly advanced, leaving diagonal traces on the glass. We  passed indistinct shapes that could have been ancient people, making their way to the sacred mounds. Or it could have been Ash trees and cows. It was that kind of fog.

Our driver carefully eased between impressive stone columns into the tiny car park. Rob gathered us into a circle as we stepped down from the bus. As scarves were adjusted and jackets tightened against the chill, he described how tribes would gather here for the week-long celebration. His highland dialect deliberately broadened to help set the scene.

We were at Balnuaran of Clava, better known as the Clava Cairns in the Scottish Highlands near Inverness. We were here on a Heritage Tour to visit an ancient observatory and burial place built two thousand years before Christ. Each of us on the bus this early morning could trace ancestral connections to this ancient land.

I crossed the gravel and squeezed through the wooden stile. The fog was thinning under a weak morning sun and darker grey shapes began to emerge. My breath caught as a ray of filtered sunlight highlighted a large cairn on the far side of the park. I raised my camera to take a picture but just as quickly, it was gone; as if it was meant for my eyes alone and not to be shared. Rob began to gather a group around a tall ring stone to my right. Their voices were muted and soon faded away as I stumbled over the rocky ground. I was drawn to that far cairn.

Tendrils of mist, some as tall as people, lingered in the thinning fog. It was easy to imagine them as the spirits of those who had watched over this holy place for centuries. They swayed and nodded to me as I passed.

I read that the third cairn was a huge stone burial mound known as a passage grave. The passageway to the central chamber was aligned to the midwinter solstice.

I resisted the urge to enter the passage and instead found a large stone where I could sit and look into the cairn. The strengthening sun warmed me as I thought about the monument in front of me. We had been told it was likely this was built as the final resting place of a single person.

I wondered what was the status of that person? Was it a clan chief? A holy man? Had they planned for the monument before their death? Were the stones laid first as an astronomical calendar and then later re-purposed as a burial site?

I tried to imagine living in those times and attempting a project of this size and precision. I soon gave up that line of thought. The evidence was directly in front of me. What they had accomplished was remarkable. Each stone in the outer ring had to weigh tons.

More remarkable, to me, was that the scholars tell us this site was in continuous use for over a thousand years. I thought about that. I thought that it was possible people of the time would still remember who was buried here after 2 to 3 hundred years, given the long memories and verbal histories of Celtic communities. But to honor someone's memory for a thousand years? Surely the site held a much greater significance to have been in continuous use for so long.

As the sun banished the last remaining mists I sat with my eyes closed and tried to invoke some genetic memory of this place. That my ancient ancestors had been here I did not doubt. That they had left a trace of memory buried deep in a DNA strand, I thought possible.

If it was there, I could not summon it. My thighs reminded me that I had been sitting overlong on a cold, damp rock. I somehow got to my feet without calling for help. My traveling companions had advanced to the center ring but were still far enough away that their chatter was not intrusive. In fact, I felt a deep calm. I knew at that point that I was supposed to enter the cairn. As I stepped over the threshold stone I laid my hand on the left-hand rock that anchored the entrance and ducked my head. In the center chamber, I touched some of the depressions and wondered why they had been sculpted into the stones. I found no answers there. Not to that question or any others that I had. As I stood up, I could see people from our bus coming my way. I left the chamber rather than share it.

Rob joined me on the stone bench as we waited for the others. "I have been coming here for over thirty years and it still amazes me every time," he told me. I agreed with him that it was amazing and thanked him for bringing us here. I described my feelings, including my failed attempt to connect with my ancestors.

"Oh, I think you did," he told me. "I happened to be watching when you entered the South Cairn. You ducked your head as you entered the passage. There hasn't been a roof on that cairn for over three thousand years."