Unseen hands have tied coloured ribbons to an oak tree at the foot of a whale-backed hill. Whoever crossed the chalk stream to fasten these pretty streamers in red, blue, gold and white found meaning in this place or with the people who came here before – those unknowables who lugged boulders many times their own weight to the top more than 5,000 years ago.
We make the ascent, along a modern processional path between fields of wheat to where they fashioned their mound mausoleum. I dwell, as I invariably do at archaeological sites, on the wild bridge between peoples past and present. There are skylarks here, and when they are not skittering across the ground, they rise and rise.
Did they enter neolithic cosmology, these birds that sing their way up to the sun? Was there a part for plants too, the last of the nodding cowslips forming a bouquet to carry into the chambered tomb? Did those people admire the spots and lace webbing on the flickering wings of fritillaries that stay low on the breeze-buffeted hillside? Did they draw inspiration from the black on orange for their art?
We come to the mouth of this long barrow, where moderns speculate that those here long ago communed with their dead. A pair of swallows appear to fly out from within, and they are held for a symbolic moment against the wind before tilting into it. Ours is a more prosaic sidestepping of giant stone uprights to enter this prehistoric monument. A Spanish couple step out with “Very impressive” on their lips, and it is too: the heft and deft craft of shaping massive stones into a tunnel and chambers, each cell partitioned from the “nave” by a waist-high slab.
A gleam emanates from halfway down the tunnel, the side of one stone rubbed shiny by countless fingers. I stretch my arms to their full span, locking my fingers on to the whole boulder. I’ve lifted some rocks less than a fraction of its size lately, and imagine in this one the weight, sweat and straining of real people.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
