I am in Salisbury now. Walked around yesterday..got a pair of low *wellies* so I can go walking in the rain at Avebury to be with my stones

It is like a pilgrimmage, this going to visit the stones. They sing when they see me, like the dogs do when I come home and they are waiting at the fence. *She's here!, she's here!*.

I will go and visit the stones, say hello to the sheep who live there with them. And then to the little book store to see about this year's crop circles...what unfolding there has been in 2012.

I am staying in a hotel built in 1400 something..there is an ivy in the courtyard which is reported to be more than 300 years old. I often think about what it has seen and heard, the stories of people sitting in the courtyard sipping beer and tea, talking. They sit no matter how grey it is, as long as it is not raining...and then if it rains, they sit under the edge there, in grey or dark green coats, smoking. I think they do not allow smoking in the pub, so the smokers sit outside while itis slightly misty and damp.

Inside in the parlour, there are grey haired ladies drinking tea and men in tweed drinking stout. They talk of the weather, their children, their dogs and some politics. The tone of the voices remind me of my mother and her family, reminding me of tones back through the generations, back to tweed and tea on grey days with a fire in the fireplace.

I remember the first time I came to England. There was a coal fire in a fireplace. I cam from AZ and had never seen anything like it. It felt like the world was right that winter. We came in Nov..everything was grey and wet, but there was coal in the fireplace burning with a brightness and there were Cornish pasties and hot tea and bangers and mash and everything seemed all right.

When I come back, I remember being 11 and discovering this land of my people.

Kathleen