And now, the Mists of Avalon

This afternoon we made our way to Glastonbury, leaving the pleasant town of Wells behind and entering into the buzz and craziness of Glasto. We’ve blogged and even posted a podcast or two about this town, but we have never seen it as we’ve seen it tonight.

Leaving the peace and comfort of Magdalene Guest House, our refuge in this town, we  plunged into one of the deepest fogs we’ve experienced. Suddenly, Glasto disappeared. We were transported into a Kafkaesque landscape where strange shapes appeared and disappeared out of the mist. The human-like beings we met on the street seemed to have emerged out of an old Boris Karloff movie, hunched over, draped in strange dark clothes, coming together and drifting apart.

We hurried to one of our usual dining venues, the “Who’d a Thought It,” finding our way through wispy tendrils of fog. Would it still be there in this strange night, or would we have somehow been transported to another planet? We entered the restaurant, the familiar waitresses greeted us, and we were once again safe.

As Elyn and I ate our pork belly and winter roulade we wondered what it would be like to climb the Tor this evening. What would await us there? Elyn thought we might be taken into the “hollow” Tor described in legend and never return. I wasn’t feeling too grounded either. When we left the restaurant, we decided not to risk climbing the Tor, but we still wanted to experience more of this mysteriously altered world we found ourselves in.

As we walked up the High Street to the sound of the change ringers in the parish church of St. John the Baptist, the sound echoed eerily in the night, coming from one direction, then another. We made our way to the church yard. The gate was locked. Elyn took the photo above on her iPhone 5s, marveling at how the camera seemed to bring out details that we couldn’t see in the fog.

Returning to Magdalene House we realized that we had experienced the fabled “mists of Avalon.” Perhaps if we had walked up to the top of the Tor, we would indeed have entered into another realm…

And now, the Mists of Avalon