Beware, Elderly Crossing!

I arrived here to the city of Salisbury with little knowledge of just what I was arriving to; with only images of the mysterious "Stonehenge" dancing in my head, evoking wonder and excitement about seeing a monument that I knew only as probably the oldest structure I will have ever seen. It turns out, Salisbury is quite the place to be! A quiet town dated back to circa 1200 when it was moved from the medieval civilization of Old Sarum further south. Moving this large Norman population here, brought with it the eager Catholic leaders longing to attempt to astound God yet again with one of their architectural marvels. Although sites of interest mentioned to the European tourist haveing anything to do with Cathedrals can get quite tiring, the Cathedral of Salisbury is one I'm glad I didn't pass up. With the tallest spire in the UK, a Gothic-style structure adorned in detailed carvings, and surviving so many generations of wars and bombings, this cathedral was of its own category. I dropped by just at dusk, as the spire lit up and the high school kids in their private uniforms gathered to share pizza in the large frotn lawn, giggling and teasing their gender counter-parts. Yet again, I find the similarities of humans all over the world to far outnumber their differences.

I have been staying in the Youth Hostel Association villas of the UK. Government-run and apparently begun nearly 50 years ago, the "youth" inhabiting the hallways of these villas were, in fact, truly at their youth prime in the 1960s. Sixty-year-old British grandmothers are my dorm-mates here; most still traveling independently, out of a back pack, and easefully crawling up to their top bunks after a night of drinks downstairs with their new-found friends. There are numerous opportunities for easeful hikes and walking tours for the elderly around the UK, and Salibury even proudly protects its majority clientelle with road signs stating: "Caution: Elderly"; the sign has the outline of two hunched over beings, arm-in-arm with the assistance of a cane. It is a different atmosphere from my usual hostel experiences, and I particularly love it. Instead of being the only bum, twenty-something traveler to wake up for breakfast, my morning tea blesses me with widely-differed opinions from elderly men and women of the war generation of the UK, what an opportunity for chatting!

In the morning, I caught the cheap tour bus through the countryside of the Wiltshire Region of Southwest England, up to the mythical location of the Stones. Surprisingly, this mythical location captured in cloudy, ominous photographs seen round the world, is not so mythical after all. Maybe I just caughtit one one of England's only sunny days, or maybe I'm jaded after my National Geographic-esque Machu Picchu trip, but Stonehenge sits on a hill in the middle of two bustling highways carrying Brits to and from the city. But wait.. it gets better. 

The stones are thought to have been gathere dand placed in the current circular form nearly 5,000 years ago during the Neolithic period. Apparently, archeologists (I don't know how) estimate this to be around the same time the pyramids were being erected in Egypt. On the contrary to the great Egyptians, not much at all is known of the people who inhabited these lands so ong ago, but from the structure, we've derived som egood hypotheses. Despite the lack of Galileo's telescope and Copernicus' theory's of the sun-centered universe, these ancient architects seemed to have discovered that the sun moved across the sky in different patterns throughout the year, particularly the solstices. The monument was constructred, thereafter, in conjunction with the patterns of the sun, providing an archway for the sun to shine directly through at each months passing. Some believe this indicates a worship of the sun, common trait of ancient people; yet others think Stonhenge was simply the world's first scientists' laboratory, where they could examine the movements of the sun and moon. Whatever the case, one cannot help but be awed and agape at the sheer size of these monolith rocks, drug from a quarry 50 miles away, lifted upright with ropes and possibly only by the strenth of giants, all erected to form a clearly defined circular form with the axis of the sun's trace directly through the center. 

Every time I turn around I am being amazed and humbled by the achievenments, diligence, and intellect of my ancestors in the human race.