The tree spoke of continuity and formed a shelter against the fickleness of the present. It told me that, in spite of the extremes of our current age, there are places in our natural and historic environment that are telling.
Weighed down with the complexities of modernity, I stand before the porch of St. Peter and St. Paul and take on the mantra of Bacon's Novum Organum.
I walk around the outer edges of the circle (and pick up the crisp packet) - then cut through the centre, past the prostrate couple who are now sitting up and having a smoke. As I move closer the bright orange dot takes shape.
I sense their flow at first-light every morning, when they arrive with their animals. I hear the same words over and over again: Dolly, Bonny and Patch. From monastic chanting to pedigree panting.
Some people have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to rise up in a tiny capsule to the earth’s perimeter and see the stars through an oval window. There's no comparison to the transcendental nature of the sylvan, alternate reality that is Cheesden.
I place my thumb upon the latch and press. It makes a delicious ‘click and clump.’ I think of the person I’ve just seen walk in through the door before me. They pressed it too.