Summer solstice at the Helfenstein

I spent most of today looking for menhirs. That is, I spent a lot of time searching the internet and studying maps and books to identify Hessian standing stones or natural rock formations that might have continued to be the focus of pre-Christian religious activity until the conversion period. I found quite a few, too, mostly where I was hoping/expecting to find them.

On Thursday I dragged Carolyn, my first visitor, up to a huge basalt outcrop called the Helfenstein. I'm going to write more about it in due course, once I'm fairly confident that my theories about it aren't completely nuts. Here I'll just remark that I think it was a very special place when Boniface & Co. arrived in the eighth century.

It so happened that one website I visited reminded me that certain prehistoric stone structures were arranged with an eye to the heavens, designed to have some kind of relationship to the solstices. I thought of the Helfenstein high up above the Warme valley, and how it seemed to act as a focal point in the landscape, and then I thought how good it would be to go up there during the summer solstice and see what it was like.

Then I checked when the solstice was, and found that by sheer coincidence it was today. I checked the time; it was almost 9pm. Sunset was at 9:30. I did a quick calculation, grabbed my camera and car keys, and raced outside. Helfenstein is a few miles from Friedrichsaue, just close enough to reach in twenty minutes, including time to climb to the top.

As I raced across the grass towards the summit, the deepening sunset at my back, I passed a women leaning on a fence. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she said. I agreed, and said I was hoping to take a photo from the top. "Better hurry!" she exclaimed. At Helfenstein I greeted an elderly couple watching the west, two teenage boys clambering over the rocks and a dozen cattle grazing on the slopes. The summit itself, a mass of basalt that rises twisting from the earth like a nightmarish cathedral, was deserted.

Standing on the highest outcrop, I saw that the sun was sinking precisely behind the second highest. Is this significant? Well, no. It's a natural outcrop, so it must be a coincidence. But it was certainly very pretty.