Guest Post: Read, and Your Mind Will Go Here: The Collected Stories of Weskes by Robert Fripp

John Denver said it best: "Almost heaven. Take me home, the country roads, back to where I belong." I touch your soul, John. I grew up in "almost heaven" in England.

Much later, in Canada, I found my "almost heaven" again, writing 40 stories in two books: "Wessex Tales, Volume 1" and "Wessex Tales, Volume 2" .

The name covers several counties in southwestern England, including Dorset, a land of green, rolling hills above a row of white cliffs on the English Channel. Streams from retreating glaciers carved channels through the chalk mountains and flattened the slopes. These chalk streams support wildlife and vegetation in some of the best natural habitats in England. To the west, the chalk sinks beneath the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage site.

A professor of Celtic studies once wrote that "Dorset" means "entrance" or "door" in ancient Celtic language. Dorset, he said, was truly the gateway to British prehistory. The captain of an ancient ship could sail from the Normandy peninsula directly to the North Star and take the ship ashore on the Dorset coast. A 6,000-year-old track, the Wessex Ridgway, runs northeast from the coast at Lyme Regis along the ridge that connects the hills, through the lands that were once settled by the people who gave us Stonehenge. Central England lies further afield.

Mass migrations to England continued for thousands of years. The first part of that ancient route through the Dorset Chalk Hills was dotted with "cottages" where early settlers dug trenches and built high banks on the hilltops. The first arrivals fenced themselves and their animals to prevent later immigrants from struggling to find their own hills. Bronze Age cottage ditches and embankments still stand, surrounding the circular hut foundations, which were dug out to keep out the wind.

Many of my 'Wessex stories' follow the Stour Valley in north Dorset, a valley that runs between ancient cottages. The subtitle of two "Wessex Tales"? "Eight Thousand Years of British Rural Life."

We begin with a hunting story, a baby and a hare 8,100 years ago, a century before a tsunami swept Britain away from Europe. What follows is my story, on the shores of Kingfisher, where two young men from different tribes meet; they fall in love, to the disapproval of their people. The following story, Bronze, finds a boy stealing a bronze ax from a newcomer, forcing the boy's shaman to explain this never-before-seen "stone." Next, a farmer and his gang of laborers carried the final lintel to Stonehenge, which is located on the grounds of Stonehenge.

Wikipedia defines my home town: "The beautiful county of Dorset, England"; Anglotopia often features one of Britain's most famous streets, Shaftesbury's Golden Hill. Its high pilastered stone walls once surrounded a monastery commissioned by Alfred the Great in 888. Alfred's daughter, ?helgif, became the first abbess of Shaftesbury.

Time and my story continue. In AD 44, the Roman Second Augustinian Legion captured the English fortress (Day of Anger) on Hod Hill in Dies Irae. The future emperor Vespasian directed the attack, even more so as his legions marched over mountain after mountain before reaching complete conquest. Rome ruled Britain for nearly four centuries.

Around 320, a Roman English family commissioned a stunning mosaic floor for the dining room of their villa, near the modern village of Hinton St Mary. The face on the floor is that of Christ, and this is the earliest and perhaps the only mosaic floor mosaic of the face of Christ. (The face is on display in the British Museum; your Internet search term "Mosaic Chris Hinon" found an image of it.) The face on the floor gives the face of Christ "history" for the first time.

In the late sixth century, a missionary risked his life to bring the word of Christ to pagan Dorset. My story's silent witness discovered the man and his mission 1400 years later when a strong wind knocked down an elm tree; its massive roots "caught" a section of Roman drainage pipe, lead at both ends The tube seal is rough. Inside the pipe was a scroll of the Preacher's Life and Confessions, written in Latin on parchment, purple, and oak-gall ink.

The Black Death struck the port of Dorset in 1338-139, shockingly killing a quarter of the population. The book of Revelation tells the story of a courageous priest. Father William Fitzburg, of the Parish Registrar, fought with faith, hope, and holy water to preserve his honor in order to keep his people alive.

Two miles from my late parents' home lies the small village of Fiddleford (ten years, six miles and a canoe). The Anglo-Saxons called this Fetra's Ford, the same as Fetra in Beowulf.

In the 1860s and 1870s, my grandfather and his siblings lived here, crowded into a small house with their married sister. In my early teens I paddled past that cottage and Fiddleford Mill, which was recorded in the Daily Mail in 1086. There is also Fiddleford Manor here, where fine medieval timber supports a great hall and a solar. King Edward III, Sheriff of Dorset, once gave the home its name.

This is a story that took time to research. Why did the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millais flee France to spend two summers in my village? Searching for Edna in Stone Ridge turned up several answers.

Now, World War I and its aftermath. In France, a soldier from the village of Shillingsone advances over a short distance towards enemy lines. Then a young woman fled to the heights of the mile-long hillfort on Hambledon Mountain to mourn her fiancé, who had been gassed in the trenches. The storm restored her sanity.

The facts support these stories. In 1919, at the end of the war, the British press discovered that Schering had the highest proportion of soldiers sent into the trenches than any other village in Britain. The press awarded Hillingstone the title of "Bravest Village" and its war memorial was designed, built and dedicated a full year before the Cenotaph in London. A monument stands proudly with the names of the 26 victims. When I was a child, this village was like a lonely woman, only place for women.

I’ve outlined some of the stories here. There is much left for you to read. They take shape in fiction, memory, and history. All of these are stories from my country. Amazon's "Amazon Author Page" lists books by Robert Fripp as available for sale at hps:amazon/rober-fripp/e/B001K8AXNA.

Learn more about Fripp's "The Weskes Story" book on his personal page, hps:roberfripp.ca->Books