The Land

There’s something unique about the land where death, ritual and myth are close to the living. Time here is slowed to a point that it becomes meaningless; endless, as though it’s seen forever. The land is beautiful and mysterious, silently enduring; tinged with sadness and loss, but also richness that imbues a sense of familiarity; unsure if it’s a landscape from a memory that leaves a feeling that I’ve been here before or some disconnected dream that I had and can’t say when. The ruddy clay is heavily trodden with deep impressions of hooves, wheels and men. There’s a scent of hay under a dark gray blue sky; frost draped narrow cedars and moss covered old stone walls line an ancient path traveled by beggars, thieves, farmers, soldiers and kings; a common road used by many for millennia for daily tasks and ceremony. Here winter comes early to reveal the bones of the landscape and the ghosts that still linger. Where arcane gods once toyed and ruled over men determining the fate of crops, battles and loves. Ramparts in ruin once held strong against pillaging hordes; where much blood has been shed, saturating and feeding the soil. The weather worn bronze faces and gesturing hands of the local people; the furrowed bark of bare broad oaks and shriveled grapes on thick gnarled vines having grown from the same earth, echo each other in their age old tongues of the lost ways. The land and her inhabitants are inseparable even in death; she takes them in, covers and holds them for eternity. When the wind is just right across the clearing, on a night without a moon, the howls of the dead can be heard. Scars in the land continue to tell their tales.