A shaft of sunlight pierces the leaf canopy, to light the glade before me. Birdsong and wind-sigh fill a silence which hangs heavy as a velvet drape. In the distance, Sunday church bells peal.
Underfoot, the sharp crackle, of twig and pine cone, seem shockingly loud. As I follow an overgrown path further into the deep green of this forest realm.
Fashioned from a fissure in a bluff, the Dolmen de Kermarquer slowly reveals itself, from amid dappled shadows. Built, by a mysterious civilisation, long before the coming of Christianity.
Their edifices, oft as not, engineered around the curves and contours of the living landscape. Further on, the Tumulus of Keroc'h tops a natural rise. Its entrance marked by a standing stone.
The man made works cloak themselves in nature's infinite variety of foliage: Dark and sharp. . . .
. . . .soft and bright. . . .
. . . .dainty and diaphanous.
A wildflower meadow surrounds the Dolmen de Kermario.
Which is of wholly man made construction: walls as well as capstones. The setting lent presence through its encirclement, by the massed stone armies of Les Alignements de Carnac.
Which emerge from the shade of the broadleaf woodlands.
To file over hill and dell.
Stretching for as far as the eye can see. Their procession three miles long. Their complement three thousand strong.
Similar creations, of a smaller scale, are spread across the shorelines of Atlantic France, the Isles of Scilly and on north to Scandinavia. Suggesting that a seafaring society was their architect.
The purpose of this extensive and elaborate stone sculpting is much speculated upon. For, its statement still resonates powerfully, five thousand years after completion.
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