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epitome of incomprehensibility
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David remembered one possible hill path from when he'd been there nineteen years ago. But he wanted to find signs that assured the way.
And there they were, maybe two blocks over: "Glastonbury Tor, 1 mile"; a non-violent murder of crows; a black cat guarding the gate to the upwards path.
Small even for a domestic feline, it moved with a mix of mystery and endearing vulnerability. Sitting atop the gate, it seemed a keeper of mystical secrets. Pausing at one end of the gate's top bar, it seemed afraid of jumping. It went back to the other end and snaked down the wooden post.
Several cows sat on the slope ahead, tags in their ears. For some reason, I thought the cat would go up to them but it followed us.
"It's our guide," suggested David.
The band of crows circling overhead added to the mystic atmosphere. The cow pies we had to step around, not so much.
But the cat paused as I took pictures of the landscape. David wanted to see if he could nudge my cell phone camera into greater clarity and then declared his intention to photograph the cat, but it slinked into a field to our right.
...
Words replaced the cat as guides, though they weren't as personal: signs said to keep dogs on leashes since livestock might roam. We passed a field dotted with sheep. Attached to the fence between us and them was a phrase on ten sheets of paper, one letter each page: GO WITH LOVE.
I wanted to take a picture of it and I did. But David made my first attempts wobble with laughter as he proclaimed, "It's promoting bestiality."
"No, no, it means to go away. With love."
"No, it's like... With love? Go ahead! ...Maybe the sheep want it. Maybe it's their slogan. Choose love. Choose sheep."
"You're making me laugh and I can't focus." I meant the camera. But I perhaps started the joke by saying I liked both cats and dogs "but_not_in_a_sexual_way," anticipating an allusion to my orientation. Which is up, but with pauses.
...
Now we saw the tower atop the hill and other people wending their way up to it. The "Tor" was an old Celtic word for hill, a sign said (I'd thought, Englishly, it was an old form of "tower"). The tower itself is all that remains of a 14th-century church built there, itself We couldn't go straight to it, because the field between was for grazing livestock, but when we came near a parking lot, we saw another footpath going up.
Steep stairways, the slabs of stone themselves slanted. Up and up and up. Drumming from the hilltop. Rabbits on the field. Two dark-skinned men passing us going down, the skinnier one saying to David, "Do you have vertigo like I do?"
"Maybe a little bit?"
"Keep going. Don't look down," with a friendly laugh.
Me? Not vertigo. A residue of nervousness but also excitement from somewhere, maybe the fear_of_flying dreams.
"There's the moon," I pointed out to David.
He shook his head. "That's the sun. See how orange it is."
And it was, to my surprise. Small and dense in the vast landscape, in the cloudy mist, sinking quickly.
...
We were on the top and could hear, louder than before, the drums inside the tower. Wind stirred the peak, whipped hair around. It'd be poetic to say we held hands until the orange disc dipped for other climes, but I did stop to take a picture (where the sun looked like a pinprick of yellow light, robbed of magic and intensity). I also shoulder-boogied to the drums in a silly way for a few seconds, which helped keep me warm in the wind.
But mostly we held hands and watched the sky. Nigh on the summer solstice, a northish sunset, about 9:25 PM.
A woman in patterned pants shook a shaker as she moved in front of the tower. The drums rose to a crescendo. Then they stopped, maybe not exactly when the highlighter-red line of sunlight faded, but close. The woman stepped into the open stone tower and noted the synchronicity as she complimented the other two musicians. I didn't hear whether or not they timed their music to the sunset, but David and I also went inside, looked up at the skylight opening onto an uncertain heaven, then photographed it plus certain windows.
I wished we could stay and talk. I was curious whether two other people were speaking German or Dutch. But I stopped and stooped to take a picture of a blooming thistle, bright with remaining light.
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