wonder

Dear friend, yesterday we walked the other hills at Loughcrew, a special place, sacred, barely seen. You visited when you were with us last summer, I think you climbed to the other cairns and we followed in your footsteps a few days later. These hills, yesterday's hills, are a steepish climb and there are gates to be very ungracefully climbed over and barbed wire to negotiate but we got there and the landscape, the peace and that sense of time and history and endlessness batters at you as the wind there does and leaves you breathless. Of course our boys relished the freedom of all that open space and when I'd got my breath back I stood and heard the roar of forgotten voices and wondered at it all. Wondered at the people who'd lived here, farmed here, built here, worshiped here, died here. Over five thousand years of time. Five thousand years of wind and rain, sun, snow, the ceaseless turning of the earth and all our follies, our wars and celebrations, our planting and harvesting, all those beginnings and endings. Oh, how I wonder.