Tara for Now

Our last guesthouse had 'Hill of Tara' etched into the glass of the garden door, which we took as a fairly direct instruction about how to spend the morning.

So we drove out to the Hill of Tara, ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland, and found it completely socked in with fog — thirty feet of visibility in any direction, which honestly only improved it.

The Lia Fáil, the old coronation stone, loomed up out of the murk, then a statue of St Patrick, then the soft green rings of the ringfort.

Sheep grazed the earthworks, entirely unbothered, and the two of us wandered around in all that gray at the end of a very long, very good trip.

We spent a last afternoon in a hotel bar and then checked into the Bewleys by the airport for the night. In a week I'd be flying to Costa Rica for work, the next trip already crowding in behind this one, but that was a problem for future Morgan.

Two weeks, several thousand photographs, an unreasonable number of handstands, and one genuinely great country — the one Elizabeth had been dreaming about since she was fifteen, now thoroughly and permanently ours. Thanks, Ireland. Tara for now.