Image source: Merlina McGovern
As a military brat (my father was a United States Marine), I moved around a lot as a child. I was born in California and then moved to Hawaii; back to California; on to Okinawa, Japan; back to California; over to Texas; on to Berkeley, California for school; and then finally to Boston, Massachusetts. During all those years of moving, I never felt like I had any roots. I envied people that had never moved and had friends and family that they had known all of their lives. I envied the extended families that they had close access to. I envied the ancestors that they could trace back.
When I married my husband, I loved the fact that he had never moved from his hometown. He had strong and deep roots, and I loved that about him.
My own lack of historical roots made me attracted to historical places. When I first traveled to Paris right after I graduated from college, I remember stepping off of the bus and thinking to myself Wow, I’m stepping in dust that has coated these roads for thousands of years. People have been walking these streets forever. It amazed me.
That was why when we traveled to Ireland this summer, I was so excited to see the ancient stone circles. Some of these circles had been standing for three thousand years. It was a time span that left me in awe. Ancient peoples of the late Neolithic and Bronze ages erected these stone circles for rituals and ceremonial purposes. The stone circle we planned on visiting was the Ardgroom stone circle on the Beara peninsula. To get there, we had to drive up a narrow road, the tall thistle bushes brushing the sides of our rental car.
We parked our car and then needed to walk a few hundred meters to get to the circle. It was at that point that the heavens opened up. The entire trip, the rains had held off, but today, as we entered the grounds leading up to the ancient stones, rain sluiced down from the sky. Luckily, we all sensibly packed our rain gear and hiking boots. The hiking boots were especially key as we needed to traverse muddy boglands to get to the site. And those boglands held all manner of hidden traps like loose stones and sheep poop.
As we struggled to find our way through the rain and sheep poo to the stones, I began to curse my husband. Why oh why had he decided to take us on this route? Why hadn’t he researched the way? Hadn’t he known that the pouring rain would make finding our way difficult? I could feel my anger rising as we climbed rickety ladders and hopped from mud to stone.
And then we saw the circle. Tall triangular stones jutted up out of the heavy grasses. They were covered in light-colored lichen and leaned this way and that. As soon as we stood in their shadow, a strong wind began blowing. I could feel all of the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Had I angered the ancient gods that these stones were meant to appease? I quickly whispered a prayer to apologize for my anger, and I let the heat of that anger float away in the winds. And before I had finished that prayer, the winds suddenly died down. Had the gods heard my prayer?
I’ll never know, but I do know that I could feel the weight of the thousands of years of history that surrounded those stones, and I was awestruck. I could see why ancient peoples had toiled to build these circles from stone hewn from the earth.
These moments of awe, history, and beauty are why I travel. I so look forward to my next trip to discover more of these wonder-filled historical places.
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