NICK BANTOCK
T H E A R T O F M Y T H

HE ATLANTIC BREEZE cools the air deceptively, and it's easy to forget how hard the sun is pummeling down. I am picking my way along a cliff-top path on the north coast of Jersey, the English-speaking Channel Island just off the coast of France, in pursuit of an unearthly fissure that has been carved out of a sea-rock by the relentless barrage of waves. Head bent over, I'm choosing my footing carefully, which is why I don't see him coming down the ribbon of path ahead of me. One moment I am alone, the next he's there. He's stripped to the waist, and his skin is a fiery scarlet with thin white seams running down the outside of each arm, where the sun's rays haven't quite gotten around to grilling him.

I know instinctively that he's an Englishman. I, too, am English (by birth), and it is inevitable that we'll feel embarrassed, strangers, meeting here without introduction. I have two choices of social protocol: say something about the weather, or ask him a question. I choose the latter: "Excuse me, have you come from "The Devil's Hole?" His response to my inadvertent lead-in is pure Music Hall. "Why? Do I look that bad?"

The quip should, by rights, cut through the awkwardness, but it doesn't, and the man launches into an overly detailed description of the trail before me. He's struggling manfully to find some conclusion to his messy monologue when suddenly his eyes light up, "...And ther's a pub!"

I smile back in brotherly appreciation. We have a resolution to our interaction, and can continue happily on our respective ways.

I HAVE COME TO JERSEY to hunt for a myth. These days it's not easy to locate threads into the past, unless, that is, you are able to shut out the clutter that over trodden and their essence is diffused and diminished, which makes them fun - and important - to hunt.

The particular myth which intrigues me appears on the following page. It is the tale of a dragon, a damsel, and a traitor. There is an ancient burial mound on Jersey called La Hougue Bie ("hougue" means "mound") which is purported to be the ground on which the hapless knight expired. It is a place that for some unexplainable reason, has been tugging at me for years. Not one to ignore such yearnings, I have set out to find some answers.

I've only been to Jersey once before, and that was in 1952. I remember sitting on the parquet wooden dance floor of The Angleterre Hotel, pushing a toy racing car that had just been given to me for my third birthday. I know it's my memory and not something reinforced by my parents, because I can still feel the slight disappointment as the car insists on veering to the left, instead of traveling in a straight line.

Today is the 14th of July - Bastille Day - and it's my fiftieth birthday. I stroll into The Angleterre, find the spot where I sat 47 years ago and see if I can unite myself with my childhood. For a fraction of a second I almost manage it, and then I'm back in the here and now. It's a shame. I would like to have whispered some reassurance into my own young ear.

It only takes 15 minutes to drive from one side of Jersey to the other, so it should be a cinch getting from St. Hellier to La Hougue Bie. But driving on the island is anything but child's play. Apart from the obvious hazards of being on the left side of the road and clutching a gear shift in the wrong hand, the narrow thoroughfares prove nerve-wracking. Drivers must negotiate single lanes, looming rock walls, big blue buses barreling from ahead, and jet-lagged befuddled tourists (like me) lurching along in their hired Euro dodge 'em cars.

I arrive safely at the Hougue's parking lot, my T-shirt bathed in sweat, and wander over to the foot of the ancient tumulus. Looking up at the medieval chapel, incongruously perched on top of the mound, I am reminded of a squat, black, dunce's hat. The low-ceilinged passageway leading to the inner ceremonial chamber has been open since 1924, but the cold air that hovers around the mouth feels like it's only just been released from an eternity of captivity. The closer I get, the more disturbing the place becomes, and it takes me a full minute to pluck up the courage to enter the passage. I scuttle, crablike, until I reach the Hougue's center, stand upright, hastily count to five, then race back to the sunlight. It's not that it's particularly claustrophobic, or even filled with any kind of malevolence, it just emanates a sensation of extreme nothingness. As though an ancient spiritual presence has deserted the place and left in bereft.

On my drive back to my very comfy little hotel I start to wonder about the way the church structure is superimposed over the pagan myth site. Not that this was uncommon: In medieval times the political policy of the incoming religion was pretty uncomplicated. By declaring that adherence to any earth or fertility deity was tantamount to devil worship, the new order imposed only the severest penalties against all offenders. Looking for parallels within myself, I'm aware that my English origins have been gnawing away at me since I arrived here. All those preprogrammed behavioral patterns that I felt I'd escaped when I left my homeland to settle in Canada have been jostling around behind every encounter and social interaction. I may have superimposed North American attitudes onto my daily life, but at base, the old rituals still remain within me.

Having probed La Hougue Bie, I decide it's time to plunder The Thesaurus (the island's best old book and ephemera story). I want postcards, old tickets, stamps, and any other odds and ends to build the collages that will illustrate this quest and help act as a bridge backward from the present. Not all the way back to the origins of the tumulus, or the knight and the dragon, but enough to give me a sense of Jersey as it was 40, 70, or 100 years ago.

With my new treasures stashed safely away, I head back onto the road in search of a promontory known as The Needle. From the old postcards it looks to be quite large, and by rights it shouldn't be difficult to find, but I'm not the world's greatest navigator, and I have trouble locating the specific pointy rock amongst all the other pointy rocks. Staring out to sea, imagining dragon spines, I suddenly get a mental picture of the green-and-gold-fronted soap-store in St. Helier called Alchemy. And that in turn makes me think, "What if the tale of The Knight and Dragon was really an alchemical formula?" (I've read that the alchemists buried their experiments within tales to avoid the heresy laws). I'm no expert on the subject, and don't have the resources to pursue the historical possibility, but I can, and do, consider the surface implications. It strikes me that right at the heart of the myth's image is the battle between the protagonists, and in the center of the battle are the knight's sword (The Needle) and the dragon's wound (The Devil's Hole). In my quest to understand the myth of La Houghue Bie, I've inadvertently chosen two geological monuments that seem to represent the core of the myth. The physical signs are explicit, but I'm not sure where they're leading me.

The days have drifted by and I've come to the last 24 hours on Jersey. I have lots of notes, plenty of paper ephemera, and a sound mental picture of the primary myth. What I don't have is an understanding of its meaning to me personally.

On the plane back to Vancouver I'm dozing when it finally comes to me: I've been trying all this time to translate the myth into language. Like most people, I tent to analyze images as soon as I meet them and move the visual experience over into the world of words too hastily. Instead, I need to allow myself to think directly in pictures.

The Hougue, The Devil's Hole, and The Needle are more than locations, more than myths, they are the natural symbols that ground us. And unlike my ephemeral memory of the young Nick pushing his car, these earthly icons sit patiently, waiting to act as signposts to our self-understanding.