Hill of Dreams
A few weeks ago I was playing around with Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia's reciprocal links. Which is a nice way of coming across writers you've never heard of, and being able to immediately browse their art. A library can do that for you as well, but I work in a library and in my private time, I stay away from them. In this way I found Arthur Machen and started to read
The Hill of Dreams. I won't inflict story spoilers on you, even given the story being written one hundred years ago. By the time I finished the story I assumed without conscious reflection that there was a hill. And I knew where it might be; Caerleon, Wales. Machen's birthplace, where the story is set. I went to Google Earth to find it. Isca! Romans, their amphitheatres, and legion encampments, on the valley plain by the river Usk. All this is still visible marked onto the land to the south of the city center-
Google Local - caerleon, wales (you may need to go + scale one or two notches and re-center). The 300 year quartered camp of the 2nd legion is still half visible four thin grey rectangles mark the excavation of the centurion's barracks. The eastern side merges into the town . A museum is built where the bathes and Tribunes' offices lay. Just off the southwestern edge is the substantially preserved amphitheatre. But all this is on the flats by the river. Machen in his story placed the Roman fortress on a hill. I knew that hill must have its real world analogue. As I looked around for it I discovered first - Wales has a lot of hills. I set elevation exaggeration to 2x, the angle of observation to around 45 degrees and eye altitude to varying heights below 10,000ft . Looking over the land a mile or so north west of the town center I found a strange hill, and knew it was the one. Moreover there seemed to be an overgrown remains of fort-like ramparts visible on the hill top. Moving over to Firefox I attempted to examine this on the further Web. From Caerleon.net I learned the history of the Legio II Augustus, and the name of the hill and its earthen mounds. The Lodge Hill camp
Google Local - caerleon, wales, Lodge Hill or Belinstocke belonged to the Celts and their iron age Hill-top fort practice. Occupied during the two halves of Britain's iron age (pre and post Roman). There is dark magic in the tangled ancient green of Lodge Hill. Unusual varities of plants, and things growing in unnatural forms. In Machen's words from Hill of Dreams:
"a round heap of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt poisonous...The earth was black and unctuous, and bubbling under the feet, left no track behind....in the darkest places where the shadow was thickest, swelled the growth of an abominable fungus, making the still air sick with its corrupt odor. [finally settling down in]... a lawn of sweet close turf in the center of the matted brake, of clean firm earth from which no shameful growth sprouted.[remembering]... his struggle through the dank and jungle-like thicket...ugly misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, not one was free,but all were interlaced and grew one about another; and just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the protuberant roots. [he takes a afternoon nap]...And then he began to dream."
All named now by our taming phrase Upland ecology; (may subdivide geographically) [authorized Library of Congress Subject Heading]. Or as we read in the words of modern archaeology reports: "Additional small-scale interventions were made in and around areas of mountain bike damage within the western entrance." ... "Intensive biological activity, in particular through tree and scrub root action, had resulted in severe reworking of the soil matrices, effectively removing obvious boundaries between originally discrete layers and deposits."
The excavation of Lodge Hill Fort, Caerleon, Summer 2000.
Indefensible mad growth! This I know: the woods keep their secrets, but are forever compelled to whisper of them to the chance passer-through. Bathed in Google Earth's uniformly sunlight selected mosaics Machen's Usk river valley and hillsides look so deceptively normal, so deceptively familiar. All uncanny suburban split-levels, and swimming pools. But in the slanting distance looking south from over the subdivision that tracks up the slope of Lodge hill. The artificial gold hue on what is discernibly water - the Severn river as it broadens and becomes the Bristol Channel - points to another potential that Caerleon.net is eager to share: most versions of the Grail legend maintain that you could see the Bristol channel from Arthur's ramparts. Lodge hill is Camelot. All of which my nephew, niece, sister and brother in law would have driven by a few years ago, on the m-4 motor-way crossing over the Usk, while on their way to Cardiff. What muse, uninvited, insistent, unconscious, untrustworthy muse, is such a hill? In spite of the due caution called for do we look for our own hill? As a boy I had no hill. We were poor and lived in a swamp - the great cedar swamp
Google Local - Holliston, MA (center) - which despite its name was neither that great nor as I recall particularly filled with cedars. I can ensure you; though, the hills to either side, left and right edges of the picture, bothered me somewhat, at times.
11:57:05 PM  ;;
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