Grant Traylen

RING OF DOWNS The North Downs’ Eastern Ring as a Mandala A ring of Downs echoed through the valleys and on the scarps above, singing of nature’s life: the voices of our minds and hearts in harmony with wind and earth and air and fire, a patterned circle these create in pictures of ourselves. Ring of Downs, sequel to A Dog on the Downs, again explores the countryside through evocative images and ’landscape-triggered prose’, but this time describing that part of Kent’s Downs where the North Downs’ Way splits to go northeast through Canterbury and southeast through the Folkestone Downs. In as much as this route forms an imperfect circular shape upon the land, so too have I read it to reflect a spiritual ’mandala’ which Tibetans and Jungians regard as a symbol of wholeness. Here the inner, imaginative parts of ourselves are in correspondence with outer nature, that precious resource in need of nurture, right upon our doorsteps, wherever we might be.