another american beauty moment

Just remembered something extraordinarily beautiful that I saw whilst in Dorset. It's a lovely part of the country by default, so I'd kind of gotten used to seeing these gorgeous landscapes... does it make sense to say that it only gets better in the dark?

******

We're driving back from Salisbury, it's about 10pm, and there's five of us crammed into the Bonzmobile (20 year old Ford Fiesta, held together by baked bean tins, we have to lean forward to go up hills). We've had a great day, hanging out by the cathedral, in Charlie's daisy covered bedsit. We sat outside Pizza Hut and entertained drivers-by, pulling Mexican waves and jazz-hands as they drove past, cheering at joggers and attempting to 'faze' learner drivers by staring at them. We're in that lovely, chilled, 'it's been fantastic and now we're winding down' mood, listening to Jamie Cullum and Reel Big Fish as we chug along country roads.

We're also enjoying the added space now that we've dropped Charlie off and are back within the legal limit of passengers for this particular rust-bucket. Six people in a three door Fiesta? What the hell were we thinking?

Going along this particular windy road, I get bored of singing along to the CD player and stare out the window. It's a striking landscape: dark hills along a maroon sky, one single, bright star twinkling away to my left. Just that one tiny star in the whole sky. I start making these spiritual comparisons (as I am wont to do), about the light of the world in a big dark sky, shining over the land, when I notice a couple of other stars appearing, almost like they're answering the first one.

The road hits an incline and, from our new vantage point, I start to see a smattering of little orange lights, houses in a small village amongst the hills.

Then it gets a bit surreal. The road we're on is running parallel to another road across the valley, but while our one is open, this other road is in a tunnel of trees. I can only see it because another car has appeared on that road and I can see its headlights as they reflect on the grey trees, lighting up this weird little corridor under aforementioned stars and sky.

******

I was awestruck to say the least. I really wish I'd had a camera, or at least the ability to describe it better. Talk about an American Beauty "most beautiful thing" moment. Spanking.

The most bizarre thing, as it turned out, was that our road actually followed a large 'u' shape, meaning that the parallel road I'd been watching linked up to our one. Suddenly we were surrounded by this tunnel of big grey trees and I realised that we were now driving on the opposite side of the valley, right through the middle of the beautiful landscape I'd been trying to memorise.

Then there was singing along to Britney Spears and drinking Baileys and playing the 'intimate and revealing questions' game (we're too cool to call it Truth or Dare), but for a while that night, there was something really very profound.