The Road to Loch Ness

One of my plans while here at Findhorn for nine weeks was to travel around and see a bit of Scotland. Ha-ha! I’ve become so absorbed with life in this Community that I’ve not been able to wrest myself away. Not until, that is, my seventh week, when I rented a car for a day (what a saga that was!) and took Pieter and Raquel for a trip to Loch Ness.

 

 

Pieter and Raquel

 

Pieter is from Belgium and Raquel from Catalonia and they are both participating in the LCG (Living in Community as a Guest) program, which is the main gateway to becoming a live-in member of the Findhorn Community.  It's the program I dropped out of - remember?

Seriously, it was hard to move my focus from the daily round here out onto the open road. The A96 to be precise. However, once I was  behind a wheel again the old habits clicked right back in and I became normal again.

Our carefully planned day took us first to Clava Cairns, three Bronze Age stone burial mounds lying just east of Inverness and dating from three to four thousand years ago. They are astounding, so astounding that they are actually a "type" site. That means that cairns like these are called "Clava" cairns even if they're not at Clava.

 



One of the two passage graves at Clava. Burials were found in the center,
which is now open, but was roofed over with stone in the past.
I don't know the man, he's simply there as a scale object about six foot tall.



Raquel in passage grave.



 



 



Each cairn was surrounded by a stone circle some time after
 it was first built, but still a very long time ago.

A road slices through one of the stone circles.



 



The lowest course lining the cavity at the center of each cairn
is made up of large stones like these.



 



A few stones show "cup marks" like these.



 



General view of the site.

Bronze Age cattle?

Battlefield Thoughts

 Our second port of call was the battlefield at Culloden, very near Clava Cairns. I have to make a small digression here to recall that some years ago I took my oldest grandson, Damon, out for a day to visit Crown Point, a pre-US Revolutionary War fort in New York State.  As we crossed the stunning bridge across Lake Champlain at Chimney Point, crossing from Vermont into New York, we saw a curious sight. A handful of people dressed very strangely ran down from the foot to the lake on the New York side, jumped into a rowboat and rowed quickly off.

 When we arrived at the fort we found a battle re-enactment going on. Soldiers were camped out all over the place. They didn't look very American to me so I asked what battle they were re-enacting and was told "Culloden".  The people running down to the rowboat had been Bonnie Prince Charlie and his friends escaping from the battlefield.

I was horrified at the whole idea. I didn't know much about Culloden but I did know it had been a bloody massacre of the Scots. I found it really distasteful that 3,000 miles away and 350 years later people were enjoying its re-enactment. 

So when I realized that Culloden battlefield lay on our route to Loch Ness, I decided to stop there. to connect with the sadness of the place. I should have known better. It's a huge open field, yes, I should be thankful for that, but it's also a tourist attraction with coffee bar and gift shop, which all felt a bit odd to me. Maybe it's better to preserve it this way than to forget it altogether - or is it?

 

Site of the Battle of Culloden, April 16, 1746
 

Onward to Loch Ness

Glaciation is an extraordinary process which began to be elucidated in a scientific way for the benefit of our current culture in the mid 1700s. Both Loch Ness in northern Scotland and Lake Champlain in the northern USA/southern Canada are glacial lakes.  I live beside one of them and here I was visiting the other, so I ran a comparison:

• Loch Ness is 23 miles (37km)  long; Lake Champlain is 125 miles (201 km) long.
• Surface area of Loch Ness is 22 square miles (56 square km); surface area of Lake Champlain is 490 square miles ( 1,269 square km).
• Maximum depth of Loch Ness is 788 ft (240m); maximum depth of Lake Champlain is 400 ft (120m).

Its great depth means that Loch Ness is the largest body of freshwater in the UK. Lake Champlain is, I believe, the eleventh largest lake in the USA.

We took the road along the south-eastern side of the Loch, the B852. Several people had recommended it, omitting to point out that it's single lane, with passing places, as so many minor roads are this far from civilization. That was no problem, however, and it was an extremely good route for us because, unlike the main road on the other side of the Loch, it allows easy access at several points to the waters of the Loch itself.  We stopped several times along the way. 

 

Loch Ness from the west about 1pm, Tuesday, March 10, 2015.



Raquel demonstrating easy access to the Loch

Welcome to Loch Ness

 

 

Our destination was the small, and I mean small, settlement of Foyers, about half way along the Loch. We ate lunch, then ventured down to the 165ft (50m) Falls of Foyers .

 



Squirrels seem to be quite important
to the people of Foyers.

.

Perhaps because they're so cute.

We took a scenic route back, past Loch Mhor and Loch Ruthven, relishing the sensation of being beyond the firm embrace of the Findhorn Community for a day, but being sure to reach Cluny in time for dinner!



Goodbye, Loch Ness. 5pm, Tuesday March 10, 2015.

 

 

More views of Loch Ness:

 

 

 

Dancing Delights

I really thought that while I was at Findhorn I’d be blogging almost every day, and here we are, nearly a month since my last blog – except that I’ve just published a short one about the solar eclipse yesterday, which I thought that should stand alone, unmixed with Earth-bound subjects.

I’m just entering my final week here in the Findhorn Community. This past week, March 14-20, I spent at Cluny, the part of the community located in the town of Forres, participating in a Findhorn workshop called “Pathways to Authenticity”. It was emotionally rigorous, a bit like a week of group therapy.

Now I’m safely back in Caroline’s bungalow in the Park, recovering.



Moray Arts Center, Findhorn Community - sensible photo
showing circular gallery at near end;
this is where we dance on Saturday mornings.

At 8:30 this morning, Saturday, I led the weekly meditative Sacred Circle Dance in the Moray Arts Centre, which is a charming building right here in the Community used by the upper grades of the local Steiner (Waldorf) School as well as by many artists. There’s a slate-floored circular art gallery just large enough for a dozen people to form a circle in.   Some new paintings had been hung this week: they were very bright student copies of Van Goghs and Klimts and created a much better atmosphere than the previous exhibit of student female nudes.
(I mean the artists were students, not the models.)  Actually, on the Saturday intervening between the taking-down of the nudes and the hanging of the bright paintings, I spent a  good few minutes puzzling about the “new exhibit" which seemed to consist entirely of pieces of masking tape carefully placed

Moray Arts Center - nice sunset photo
that doesn't show the building as well but I like better.

at irregular intervals on the walls. They turned out to be place markers for the new hanging.
Seriously, though, this Saturday  session is short, and it creates a wonderful start to the weekend. I began with a simple Pravo danced to “Codru” a haunting Romany tune, followed by “By a Quiet Stream” – the French version so I should say “Au Bord D’un Rue Tranquille”, then “Standing Stones” choreographed by Jan Mulreany to a song by Mary McCoughlin, and finished with Anja’s version of “Joy is in My Heart.”  You will gather from this that my idea of meditative dances tends toward the ecstatic movement school of meditation and energy-raising rather than that of somber contemplation.

The Dance goes on  . . .

I’ve been busy with Circle Dance: one Tuesday evening in early March, during the break in a rather fun “experienced group” Sacred Dance (I’m using the terms Sacred/Circle interchangeably, not entering the debate)  led by Peter Vallance, Laura Shannon said to me: “Julia, are you leading any dance sessions while you’re here?”   I kinda wanted too, but hadn’t liked to ask, so with Laura’s impetus behind me, I plucked up courage and made enquiries: there were three possibilities, so I pursued all three, reckoning that at least one would work out. Findhorn magic stepped in, of course, and all three have manifested!

So Wednesday March 11, I led the regular Wednesday 

Dancing in Universal Hall: Four Seasons

 evening Sacred Dance in Universal Hall. I get a thrill just writing those words! I found myself telling Iris, my Park Garden colleague, that it was like a singer getting to sing at the Albert Hall (or Carnegie Hall if you’re from the USA). Looking back now, I remember a bright and energetic circle of dancers – there were 18 of them – graciously weaving their way with me through a bouquet of Spring dances, including: Maze; Le Printemps; Bells of Norwich; Sellinger’s Round; Stone Circles; Lore; Al Achat; Kak pre Balkje (of course - when do I ever not do that one!) And a charming Brazilian couple took some action photos for me.
 


Kak pre Balkje - me in purple, Christine behind me and Francesca on the right.
A glorious dance!

I suspect that this dance is Sellinger's Round, which makes  a nice Maypole dance.
We'll be dancing it April 30 and May 9 in my backyard in Burlington, Vermont.
Photo gives an idea of the Hall. That's mural at the back, not a window!

 

 

There was no opportunity for me to lead a Tuesday evening “experienced group” session because of prior bookings, so instead we’ve scheduled one for Monday evening, March 23, in Cluny Ballroom. Yes, it really is a ballroom, with towering stained-glass windows, a superb wooden floor and a large picture of a Unicorn on the end wall.  It’s going to be wonderful!  Tomorrow, Sunday, I have all day to prepare and I’m especially glad to be dancing at Cluny because many of my Findhorn friends, especially those I met during my two-week fly-by in the LCG (Living in Community as Guest) program, are still staying there.  It'll be easy for them to attend!

I am eternally grateful that I discovered Circle Dance one evening in 1993 at the Connaught School in Hove (thanks, Jan!) It’s taken me on a long and nourishing journey, opening many doors of perception. Here at Findhorn, where Bernhard Wosien nurtured the idea of Sacred Circle Dance 40 years ago, I feel as if I’ve alighted in mature garden of dancing delights.   So, please, think about dancing with me Monday evening, here at Findhorn, or wherever in the world you are! Let's dance together!

Come dance with me!

 

 

 

 

 

Dark of the Sun

For one miraculous instance I saw the almost totally eclipsed sun at 9:50am on Friday March 20.



To give you an idea: this photo is not from March 20, 2015,
but this is just about what I saw.

A large group of us had been standing for some time outside Cluny, which is on high ground, looking hopefully south eastward into great banks of cloud behind which we knew the sun was lurking.  We could see its faint glow and a great deal of dispersed light. At the height of the eclipse, which was around 95% here, the light dimmed no more than as if a dark cloud had intervened, and we thought that was all we’d see. But we stayed, gazing upwards, and a sudden brief parting of the clouds revealed for a single instance the glory of the obscured sun, the dark disc of the moonshadow beginning to slide away across the face of Helios.

In that brief glimpse I saw the diamond ring effect, which exists because the surface of the moon, and thus its shadow,  is irregular and therefore does not blot out all the light of the sun simultaneously.

It was a special moment in a special place!

 

Here are a couple of links for more on Friday's eclipse:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/video-of-fridays-solar-eclipse-2015-2015-3?r=US

http://mashable.com/2015/03/20/the-solar-eclipse-in-photos/