Camster Cairns, part two

And here are a couple of images to go with last week's Camster Cairns entry....only the outside of the cairns, taking image inside felt inappropriate

The day before I visited Camster, I spent some time at the Clooty Well at Munlochy on the Black Isle. That will call for a whole other set of words which can follow...here are some images to entertain you in the meantime....

Camster Cairns, September 2011

O, a surpise. A glory sitting on ridges above a boggy field: a round cairn and a long cairn, low doors facing the road, facing the east, gated but inviting. How much has this scene changed in the 5,000 years these cairns have stood here? Distant trees. Those shaggy tough-looking ponies could step across the centuries easily and the dark, wind-rippled lochan over the ridge behind me, might have bathed weary cairn-builders.

The moss came later, I guess. The sphagnum that swallowed the grassy stamping ground plateau in front of the cairns – although the obvious ceremonial spaces are a terrace and steps on the ends of the long cairn and behind it too, where the slope is gentler. The eastern doors, open onto steep slopes that spill down to that dance floor. Well, it was a dance floor for me, capering along the musical xylophone of the wooden boardwalk…

Too much talk, too much thinking! The passageway gates are not locked and visitors are invited to crawl inside…..

            How well did we build for our Dead?

            These stones, so carefully chosen, carefully stacked,

            Hand by hand,

            Muscle, bone and determination.

            A passage, a chamber to face the sunrise

                       

                        Here we rest,

                        Here we lie,

                        Bodies taken by fire and wind

                        Our bones charred to hold memories

                        Not just mine and ours but everyone’s

                        The tale of our people, soaked into our bones

                        Sunk into these stones

                        Stories not told for so many years

            How well do the Dead receive us?

            In these beautiful chambers,

            Rooms that ring with voices, with song, with chanted prayer

            A close tunnel, a crawl under watchful spaces

            Into this room that holds the voices of the Dead

            A cist opened out,

            Stone slabs that hold you, a thrill of contact, of connection

            A place to stop

            To be still in the darkness

            To listen for the sunrise