#7 (Final Post): Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire

I felt the place before I saw it. The very air around Avebury Stone Circle seemed to vibrate with excitement and wonder. Shouts, laughter, and dog barks drifted serenely from the hills ahead of us, partly muffled by six-inch-tall grass. Over the crest of a hill, a long line of blue-gray standing stones slowly came into view. I couldn’t see from the ground, but I knew that the stones here formed a spiral.

6,000 years old and looking good!

My parents and I spent a happy hour at the circle. The stones were enormous: when I stood in their shadows, they seemed to swallow me whole. Tentatively, I put a hand on one stone, amazed that I could touch something 6,000 years old. Instantly I felt a strange tingling in my fingertips, “as if the very stones had spirits,” as I later wrote. I marveled at the way some places once meant so much that you can still feel their significance.

            I climbed one of the hills overlooking Avebury. Standing alone at the top, I reveled in a sight I’d dreamed of for six years. Smooth, emerald-colored hills rolled out into the distance, seemingly for miles, under a brilliant blue sky. Each hill was dotted with dark green trees, cloud-colored sheep, and patches of sunshine yellow rapeseed flowers. I drank it in, my head spinning with happiness. As far as I was concerned, the flight to England had not brought me away from home. It had brought me back.

Rapeseed, one of my favorite flowers.

            My parents, not even an inch tall from up here, beckoned to me. But before I left, I took one last look at the scenery: the blue sky, the yellow rapeseed, the long grass at my feet rippling in the wind. As clearly as if he stood next to me, I heard Peter Gabriel’s voice in my mind’s ear. I smiled, listening to words that had never been more accurate, more meaningful, than they were now.

Climbing up on Solsbury Hill,

I could see the city light.

Wind was blowing, time stood still;

Eagle flew out of the night.

He was something to observe:

Came in close, I heard a voice.

Standing, stretching every nerve,

I had to listen, had no choice.

I did not believe the information;

Just had to trust imagination,

My heart going boom-boom-boom…

“Son,” he said, “grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”

The view from the hill at Avebury.

#6: The Cavern Club, Liverpool

Mathew Street, unlike the rest of Liverpool, hadn’t changed much in the past six years. One or two new Beatles-devoted shops had opened. Other than that, I might as well have been thirteen again, seeing the place for the first time. Then I heard something I didn’t remember. Music drifted up through an open doorway, sounding almost as if the earth itself was creating it:

            “I’m looking through you / Where did you go? / I thought I knew you / What did I know? / You don’t look different, but you have changed / I’m looking through you / You’re not the same.”

The Cavern Wall of Fame, performers who have played there.

            My parents and I moved down into the Cavern Club. Like Mathew Street above, it was almost the same as I recalled. Brick arches crisscrossed the dark room, and a guitarist pounded out Beatles songs on the stage (surprise!). Scrawled all over every surface were past visitors’ names. I spent a few happy minutes searching for my own name from ’09. I never found it – it was buried under six years’ worth of approved graffiti – but I still enjoyed seeing the scribblings. Some of the names were recent; some dated all the way back to the 1970s. It was amazing to think about the thousands of people who had passed through here, just to see the place where the Beatles had become famous.

Inside the Cavern.

            I sat underneath an arch, my back to the worn bricks, as close to the stage as I could get. I’d heard and played all the songs before, thousands of times: “Blackbird,” “I’ll Follow The Sun,” “Something.” But here in the Cavern, they took on the same magical quality they’d had the night I first heard them. The music’s creators began in this club. And since I owed my interest in music to the Beatles, in a way, my own life as a musician started here too.

            The guitarist entered the endless coda of “Hey Jude.” Almost spontaneously, the people in front of the stage started singing along, as usual. With the guitarist’s encouragement, the rest of the club joined in. Not for the first time on this trip, I brushed my eyes with my hand before going back to my parents’ table.

#5: Chester

Chester wasn’t originally on our list of places to go. But a friend of mine was taking classes at the university there, so we decided to try and meet up. I never connected with the friend, but what remained was a delightful day blending in with the people around me.

Chester was a postcard-quality town.

            It began on the train. I watched the city of Liverpool fall behind and give way to smaller towns nestled in the dark green hills. The seats ahead of us were filled with children, none of them older than five, chattering politely about their day trip. When we came to their stop, the aides ushered them out, and the kids repeated their phrase “Get off the train” in one adorable chorus.

"My kingdom for some cheese!"

Chester Cathedral garden

            My parents and I spent the bright, beautiful day wandering around Chester. We’d received some recommendations of things to see, namely the Roman walls and the stunning cathedral. But most of our day was spent walking around with no particular destination. I adored Chester, with its narrow cobblestone streets and shop fronts that looked like Shakespeare could’ve lived in them. Many of those buildings had dates painted above their doors; one of the homes we passed dated from 1897.

            But the thing I enjoyed most about Chester, as usual, was the people we met and saw. The docents at Chester Cathedral were bursting with information and with questions about my own trip to England. I had a fun conversation with a cheese shop owner about a “Richard III Wensleydale” she had for sale. And as we sat on the edge of the square, nibbling strawberries and cheese, I heard a symphony of everyday noises: two older men talking behind us, children laughing, and a blues guitarist serenading the square. I drank it in, happy to be considered part of this town, if only for today.

#4: Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral’s two towers cast long, dark shadows across the square. I felt my neck pop as I tried to see the roof. I found myself admiring the intricacy of it, from the smiling saints carved in layers above the doors to the tiny gargoyles near the top of the towers, leering down at the rest of Paris.

The most beautiful building in Paris.

            High above the square, the cathedral bells rang nine times. I convinced my parents to go inside for the 9 o’clock Mass, remembering how much I’d enjoyed hearing it in Spain. As we walked through the wooden doors, I could instantly tell Notre Dame was lovely, with flickering reflections of candles dancing on the black-and-white floors. And then I heard it, echoing through the columns, seeming to emanate from the very walls:

North Rose Window

            Alleluia, alleluia… alleluia, alleluia…

            The Gregorian chant, bounced off of every surface. It filled the towering stone arches, rising all the way to the bands of marble crisscrossing the ceiling. The echoes easily lasted eight seconds or longer, sound waves overlapping each other and creating an otherworldly drone effect. I crossed to the heart of the cathedral and stood still, listening to the chanting. Bright spots of red, blue, and green sparkled on my left arm. I glanced up and couldn’t help gasping: sunlight was coming through the North Rose Window, and I stood right in the center of the circle of light. Without warning, tears sprang into my eyes. It was the most beautiful thing I’d experienced in Paris.

            I wouldn’t describe myself as religious. However, I can tell when I’m in a sacred place. It’s a physical feeling: a certain tingling of the spine, a seemingly unexplained shiver that sends goosebumps down my arms. Standing there in the North Rose Window’s light, listening to the Alleluia and having those sensations, I knew that I was in a very sacred place indeed.

#3: Hound Tor and Moretonhampstead, Dartmoor National Park

Unleashing the hounds, Hound Tor.

Wildflowers at Widecombe-in-the Moor churchyard.

It was hard to believe that Hound Tor was a natural formation. This pile of granite, inspiration for my favorite Sherlock Holmes novel, looked as if a giant had used boulders as toy blocks. I looked out over the moor, straining my eyes trying to see through the fog. The hills looked exactly as Conan Doyle described them, “russet and olive slopes” torn by wind. Amazing that the landscape still looked the same over a century later. As I walked back down the hill, towards the little stream at its base, I heard the breeze sweep between the stones, moaning like a lonesome dog. I sped up my pace a little, only half-jokingly remembering that the Hound of the Baskervilles lived around here.

            Dartmoor National Park felt ancient in other ways, too. My parents and I braved the twisting, sheep-dotted roads and visited three of the many towns scattered around the park. All three – Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Bovey Tracey, and Moretonhampstead – would’ve fit comfortably inside a small Atlanta neighborhood. Their houses and shops clung to the moor’s greener parts, determined to hang on in the wilderness. They were the kind of towns where churches were still the tallest buildings. Many of these churches were ridiculously old, dating from as far back as the 1100s.

Dartmoor had some of the most fantastic views in England!

The church in Moretonhampstead was my favorite. Its tiny stained-glass windows and moss-covered headstones looked out on a play park and smooth green hills. Above, an invisible line seemed to separate the inhabited land and the deserted moorland. The top of the olive-colored hill was literally purple with wildflowers. Tearing my eyes away from this color explosion, I looked at the church for a moment. So many important events had happened here: christenings, marriages, deaths. Lives had begun, ended, and been forever changed here, for centuries. The very air seemed to tingle with history.

            I followed my dad through the churchyard gate. The only other sound in the little graveyard was the whispering of the wind.

#2: Underground, London and Paris

The Tube doors opened quietly, their swish accompanied by the usual reminder to mind the gap. As my parents and I stepped off, a second train rattled past, briefly raising my hair with its wind. The silence on the train swiftly became a low hum of sound as we joined the crowd on the platform. I had forgotten just how huge the King’s Cross/St. Pancras Tube station was. Six different Tube lines converged here, underneath two of London’s major railway stations. The rabbit warren of tunnels seemed to twist endlessly into the earth.

Mind the gap!

Appropriately, all kinds of people bustled through the rabbit warren. A bewildered-looking group of tourists consulted a wall map and argued in French, as a second group searched frantically for a Tube worker. Meanwhile, the rest of London swarmed past, apparently having memorized the entire Tube map. Students going home from school, nannies pushing sleeping babies, and neatly dressed men and women returning from work zipped around in every direction. Just around the turn in the tunnel, I heard a violin playing and the chink of coins falling into a case.

Bastille station, Paris

            Four days later, I scrambled onto another underground train. The Paris metro, like London’s Tube, seemed to cart people of every imaginable description across the city. Students, construction workers, and tourists elbowed their way into cars, the rattling of the trains and softly spoken French providing sonic background. I watched the stations zoom past, mentally pronouncing the names as best I could. Music even echoed from the twisting tunnels, just as it did in London. Entering the Louvre station, a merry jazz tune on a saxophone echoed up from the depths (check out all these sounds in the video below).

The older Tube stations, like Baker Street, are quite stunning.

            Every time I set foot in the Tube or the metro, I was always amazed at the variety of people. In cities where it’s difficult to own a car, the subway becomes the street. It is the place where everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, shares the same goal: getting somewhere. For this reason, if I were looking for good cross-section of humanity, I would need to look no further than a subway system.

#1: Trafalgar Square, London

The square from the National Gallery stairs.

My mom and I walked out of the National Gallery, blinking in amazement at the crowd. In the short amount of time we’d been in the museum, the foot traffic in Trafalgar Square had grown by about a million percent. Tourists from every time zone bustled past, Big Ben keychains already dangling from backpack zippers, cameras at the ready. Children scrambled underfoot, chasing pigeons and climbing on the lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column. Street performers dressed as Darth Vader and Yoda posed for photographs, and on opposite sides of the square, two guitarists serenaded the crowd at once. Some might have called it a sensory overload, but I found the energy stimulating.

St. Martin in the Fields

            I excused myself from my mom, darting up the National Gallery steps for a photograph. At the top of the stairs, I struggled to fit the whole of Trafalgar Square into my phone camera frame and took about ten shots, planning to pick the best one later. Nelson’s head was cut off in all of them, but what mattered to me was capturing the way the square felt. I hoped to somehow freeze this moment in time, but keep it feeling as alive as I could.

            Lowering the phone, I looked out over Trafalgar Square. From up here, I could faintly hear the fountain rushing and murmurs from the crowd. Red buses, black taxicabs, and a couple of police cars rolled past in every direction, adding their horns and sirens to the din of the tourists and locals. Then, over it all, I heard bells ringing. Smiling, I glanced over at St. Martin in the Fields, the little white church to my left.

A thought tugged at my sleeve, commentary on the wonderful madness: When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. This was life indeed, and I was thrilled beyond all expression to be a part of it. Laughter, the kind born out of mind-boggling happiness, accompanied me back down the National Gallery steps. I was only a bit surprised when I realized it was my own.