At Tara in this fateful hour…
Mom, Dad, Young Indiana and I went out to the Hill of Tara yesterday. This is one for my Bucket List, as I’ve wanted to go to Tara since I was about, oh, eight, and read A WRINKLE IN TIME and its companion novels, of which I believe A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET may be my favorite. (I should re-read those.)
It’s worth being on the Bucket List. I’m sure that for many people it’s just a big lump of hills and gulleys with no spectacular import, but for me, walking over territory which was sacred thousands of years ago, and which has left its mark on the land, is something special.
The view is spectacular. Tradition holds you can see from one end of Ireland to the other from Tara, and the impression you’re left with, standing up there in the wind, is that you can. You certainly can see to every bordering mountain range (such as they are), and you can watch the rain whip in from the distance while the sun scrapes through clouds above you to splash brightness on patchwork earth.
The Stone of Destiny (which is supposed to shriek so loudly as to be heard across Ireland when the true king of Ireland lays hands on it) was not where I thought it was, but it turned out that it’d been moved at some point, and the place I /thought/ it was supposed to be is where it used to be. It did not, to our dismay, scream when any of us touched it-but Young Indiana was asleep, so didn’t lay his hands on, and so might yet be the true kind of Ireland. :)
I didn’t, as it turned out, take all that many pictures, because mostly what Tara *looks* like *is* a big green of small gulleys and hills. It gets more interesting from an ariel view, because you start being able to see things like the Hall of Kings’ actual structure, but from the ground it just looks like you’re walking along between a couple of long low hills.
Usually, though, you don’t catch a whisper of cheers from warriors past carried on the wind behind you as you walk between hillocks.
Photos here.
(x-posted from the essential kit)