Sublime

As the British, French and Germans became intrigued by their pre-Christian ancestry, the discovery of America revealed native people who seemed to be living in a way similar to that of their own ancestors, as described by these classical authors.

In the days of Kings Æthelfrith, Edwin and Oswald the greatest architectural feats since the end of the Roman Empire stood here as symbols of royal power: a palace complex, noble halls of great technical complexity and grandeur and, wonder of wonders, a grandstand unique in its period. In a pagan temple offerings were made to the gods and tribal to

Those big bones were usually the skull and thigh bones.

The same body-habitat alliance is still at work today. In a normal human setting, children and young adults are quick to form bonds with their habitat, a phenomenon we now call “place attachment.” The human nervous system, primed by a million years of evolution, readily soaks up the features of the natural world, mapping it to the brain and body. U

The winter is a sheet of parchment that the small feet of birds, of vixens, of hares, write upon.

They continue on, into the mountains, sedately, like some kind of royal procession, the diplomatic arrival of a crowned couple. And it is historic, she thinks. It’s five hundred years since their extermination on the island. They are a distant memory, a mythical thing. Britain has altered radically, as has her iconography of wilderness, her totems.