After finishing our studies in London, Homer suggested we go to Stonehenge. “We’ll have to hitch-hike,” he said, so we took the Tube to it the end of the line and stood in the rain with our thumbs out. A lorry driver waved and stopped and we climbed into his cab.
I sat backwards on the gearbox and asked the man what he was hauling. “Thirty-two tons of Scotch whiskey,” he said.
At Amesbury, he found us a ride to Salisbury Plain. And suddenly, there they were—the gray giants in a sacred circle, standing stones that had been standing since the dawn of time. Built to calculate the dawn of time, in fact, the return of the sun each spring solstice.
The sun had returned for us, too, and dried off the grass where we sat with cheap wine and bread. There was plenty to learn about this place, but I wanted to absorb the mystery first.
“Maybe we should all just worship the sun,” Homer said. “It’s the reason for everything. We could stop fighting and sit together on the grass.”
