From Barnsby, we are having a needed rest day after a daunting period of coping with the weather, as well as coping with the earth damaging effects of nuclear armaments and nuclear power. Fellow Walker, Dan, discovered a book in the Quaker Meeting House last night that addresses the two inter-related issues in one and concludes with a chapter on non-violence as the only attitude to save humanity and Mother Earth: From Hiroshima to Three Mile Island, by Jim Garrison, 1980. Dan gave it to me with the comment, "It's your kind of book." Indeed, it is so. Garrison quotes Merton's "Gandhi and Non-violence", which has been my constant companion on this trip, among other favorite authors. The introduction is classic Merton with comments about violence being based upon "irreversible" judgements about human interactions and nonviolence upon reversible perspectives. While I am finding it difficult to get into the depths of insight I would like to with both the Walkers and the people along the way, I am heartened with Dan's remarks.

To conclude with our present string of encounters with nuke sites, we visited the Fylingdales Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station, way up north of Leeds. Gifted and committed activists drove us north to England's National Park where we walked in hard rain, mud and wind for a couple miles. When the clouds opened up, we could observe the beauty of this high country where sheep graze and wilds competed. There on the top rise was a massive three-side structure in characteristic grey, puncturing the horizon with defiance. We walked the trails and circled the site, wet and muddied, angered and concerned. The security police met us in vehicles and on foot, in numbers and with a dog. The barbed fences reinforced their message. One of them said to Marcus, our walk co-leader, "I remember you." Marcus was here before, a year or so ago.

The Station is early warning for missiles on the attack. The USSR was the opponent during the Cold War. Both the Russian and the US maintain its missiles on hair trigger alert, despite the end of the Cold War. My sudden realization: "The Cold War is not over." Now, the site will take on the added load of the Missile Defense System being created by the United States with its "allies". This, despite the fact that the System has failed test after test to stop single missiles, let alone gangs of missiles. There have to be other objectives for MDS. The grey sterility of the massive structure and its related facilities stands as symbol and reality of the emptiness of the consumer-industrial world sapping the strength of the earth. Bring back the thoughts of Garrison, Merton, Arndt, Lifton, etc. And Gandhi, nonviolence is stronger than any weapon of violence.

Our route moves on to other areas of England where we will be treated less in terms of bases, and more, I hope, with interactions with real ordinary peoples.