Hand to a Stone (Monastic Ruins of Glendalough)

By:  Rachel Orenstein

Wednesday, October 26th, 2022

When you step off the bus to see a closed visitor center and several picnic benches, you are not sure what to expect. The parking lot is surrounded by greenery and the cold, thin air feels sharp to breathe. The ground is wet with dew. You think at least it will be a nice walk. 

The group walks past a hotel towards a quaint bridge and turns left to enter a graveyard that-

Oh, wow.

The slowly-rising sun casts golden shadows on tilting gravestones so weathered and sun-bleached they no longer contain the long-dead names of their beholden. The forces of nature work in tandem to erase the details of their pasts: a person once was here, and now a stone remains. As you walk through this graveyard humbly built fifteen centuries ago, each stone you pass is the final marker of a life.

Your feet press into the soft dirt of the hilltop. The air smells sweet. Autumn breezes mimic spring’s but for a chill on the tail of each gust. Despite the high altitude and time of year, the trees are still bright green. Birds flit to and fro above your head and peer down from the windows of a stone tower. A deer, serene as the morning, nibbles on berries and poses for pictures. 

Do they understand this place, the animal inhabitants? Can they sense the ghosts that rest upon this land? Perhaps they know each other. Perhaps they are each other: the monks who built this tower may yet remain as the magpies nesting within it. Irish Saint Kevin supposedly founded this settlement - he may as well enjoy the fruits of his labor as some fearless, confident deer.

The remnants of devotion are evident in this place even after so many centuries. A modest stone cathedral stands in disrepair, roofless and open to the endless sky. You stand within, on hallowed ground, and warm your face by the sun’s kind embrace. Birds soar in the distance. Even without a religion of your own, the human disposition to worship makes sense in a place like this. This view is a majesty: mountains so green they may as well be gold, the whispers of nature waking for the day. Divine creation must be responsible. You could practically feel the hands of some benevolent god on your shoulders.

You put your hand to a stone. It is cool, grounding. Your mind returns to you, but even so you wonder how many hands have touched this stone before yours. How many have passed it? Spoken in its presence? How many people would feel this stone, centuries after you have died yourself? Were the monks who placed this stone watching you, even now?

You acknowledge them (in case they can hear you) and step back into the day, down stairs to the trail you are meant to hike. Your group waits for you there, smiling on the bridge between this glimmering graveyard city and the cover of an even more ancient forest.