Hadrian’s Wall
What a wonderful, terrible very great day. The day was cold and rainy and long. We saw more stone circles. I got pretty close to petting a sheep. I did pet a cow. Beyond all of this, I got to do all this with a great group of people.
The highlight of the day is pictured below. It looks simple. One of the images has Peter and I standing with what looks like a small avenue behind us. There is another image of me standing there alone. The narrow stone structure reaching out behind us is not an avenue. Here lies the remains of Hadrian’s Wall.
Hadrian’s Wall was started in 122 CE. It runs about 80 miles across the northern border of England. Scotland lies a short distance to the north. It’s like walking along the seashore or the edge of the forest—a liminal place, a borderland. The Wall was built for several reasons, but one of them was because the Romans could never fully conquer the Picts and other tribes to the north.
I love standing in places like this. We always stand on history. The ground outside my front door has been there since the foundation of the world, and I’m sure it has seen much. There are, however, spaces where history bubbles up—moments when you can more clearly envision the struggle and cultures of the past. That’s what Hadrian Wall was for me. A portal to consider a different time, a different world.
On this day it was very cold and it was raining this weird misting rain that soaked through your jacket and shoes. We could see the Wall, but some of us wanted to get closer. So we tramped down a muddy trail in the rain to get a bit closer to history. If it was raining like that on a normal day, I wouldn’t take a walk outside. But this wasn’t a normal day. All the cold and all the wet was worth it.
As I sit here today reflecting on this adventure, the memory is sweeter still. It’s July 2020, almost one full year since I was in this place. With the Covid-19 Pandemic, I have been in my house a great majority of the last 3 months. Going anywhere is a treat. Traveling to places like this are a distant memory of a world that we have lost, or at least we have lost it for a time. Yeah, it was cold and rainy. I spent a good portion of the day wishing my jeans would dry, wishing the feeling would return to my toes. But, to have a day like this again, oh how I long for it.
