stonehenge summer solstice

Drums beat all night underneath the sounds of the crowd and above it thin clouds shift over the stars. The ancient circle of Stonehenge is illuminated by spotlights. People are pulled towards it as if by nature. By the time we arrive, some time around midnight, the field is blanketed with rugs and bags and limbs on the grass. Beyond the spotlights the horizon is dark and low against the sky. We spread our picnic blankets over the grass thirty metres from Stonehenge and prepare to wait for dawn. 

The rest of the year, a permit is required to get within twenty metres of Stonehenge. Upwards of a million people annually visit this field just outside the little town of Amesbury in order to walk around the circumference and gawk at the collection of rocks balanced on one another like crude doorways. But on the night before the summer solstice, English Heritage opens its arms to the public and lets all who wish to walk, dance, drink, and make merry around the stones.

They stopped letting people close a few decades ago, because kilos of history were going missing each year at the hands of cheeky chippers. It’s a sad fact that the desire to steal away a tiny souvenir of the mystery overcomes our desire to see it last in its wholesome state. But it’s just the way we are. Squirrelly. We want things for our very own. Especially cool things that other people might covet. Like, you know, pieces of old rock. Actually the thought of having Stonehenge in my pocket seems just delightful, until I think a little harder and catch myself being squirrelly.

We find a place roughly northwest of the circle, a position carefully calculated for optimum sunrise viewing. I venture out with the first expedition. I want to touch the stone. It’s cool and dry, rough like sandpaper under my fingers. Patches of faded greygreen lichen grow on the surface. We move past the outer stones into the centre. The distant lights create a kind of halflight, the dusky kind that makes everyone look matte and flawless. Way out in the fields the light is beautiful but here in the centre camera flashes illuminate the crowd like fitful strobe lighting. People grasp cans of Somersby cider and refilled waterbottles of coloured vodka, and jump and sway to the erratic drumbeats and the shouting. The stones stand sentinel over it all. I try to grasp that I'm standing in the circle at Stonehenge but the grandness of the fact is slippery in the press of people. Someone spills beer on my boot. We take turns climbing up on a fallen stone. It's wild and fun but it also just feels a little bit wrong.

I read an article from 1998. Four hundred people attended the first summer solstice opening that year, people like druids and historians and archaeologists. That kind of group seems so perfect, a collection of people who occupy their lives in trying to connect with the past, bringing in the longest day together beside the ancient mystery of Stonehenge. I doubt very strongly that anyone had a case of Fosters in their carboot. That group seems far more right than this rabble. Maybe I'm just bitter because I don't have an epiphany when I touch a four thousand year old pile of carefully arranged rocks.

The night passes. We’re two aussies, five americans, a canadian, and a brit, delivered by way of big blue veedub bus from the centre of London. We wrap ourselves in blankets and pass a bag of Doritos while we talk about where we’ve come from and where we’re going and international politics and our first kisses. Good company makes the night slide by fast while the crowd around us gets tipsier and wilder and sheds beer cans like old pieces of skin.

The sky starts to lighten around half three, and the action slows as people anticipate the dawn. The crowd turns collectively to the east. As the sun lightens in layers of pink and blue, everyone spends a good while being pissed off that they can’t take an instaperfect photo because the view is obscured by everyone else trying to take one. And I catch myself doing the same. The horizon is a spotted glow of smartphones being lifted to the sky. Like the drinking and the litter, it makes me feel a little uneasy, slightly off kilter. I’m just a bit embarrassed. By our humanity, or our era, or whatever it is that makes us forget ourselves. 

I feel like the stones are watching me and tut tutting. I feel like maybe this whole Stonehenge solstice thing has imploded. I want to say that I think they shouldn't let these drunken revellers in, that these people don't really care, they're not even trying to care. But I'm not saying that. Because then I wouldn't be allowed in either, and I'm selfish. 

I’m suddenly grateful for the people I’m here with. I'm all for a good ol' boozy night, but tonight noone's drinking. For whatever reason, many reasons, but mostly because it doesn’t feel like the time. Every now and then someone goes missing from the group then slips back quietly. I think we’re all trying to find a moment of clarity in the mess or something stupid and profound like that. It’s the kind of place where that kind of determinedly meaningful behaviour seems alright. As the sun rises I put my camera in my pocket with a momentous sense of purpose and force myself only to watch. All of  the human history that I can wrap my head around seems to be represented at this geographical point. This place, this unsolved wonder, is a piece of history that unites all of history. Does that make sense? Around the stones people dance Morris dances and others yawn and huddle for warmth. I can feel myself almost grasping whatever epiphany it is I've been trying to grasp all night. Then it slips. I'm tired.

The sun full rises some time after half four. I panic and fish my camera out and take a photo. Of course I do. I’m only human.