Loughcrew > Audio on Patreon
The last steps to the summit leave the heart full and strong, breath rising in steady waves. I pause, turning to see the hill fall away, the valleys stretched wide in muted greens and grays, their edges softened by drifting cloud. The land feels endless, and for a moment I stand between earth and sky, the climb behind me, the cairn before me.
The summit opens slowly, as if unveiling itself. The great mound waits at the center, its stones dark with age, the three outlying cairns keeping watch at the edges, and the rings of upright slabs, each gap like a threshold for the unseen. Their presence is not silent; it hums, low and deep, just at the edge of hearing.
I step apart from the others scattered lightly across the dome. Their voices fade into the wind as I walk among the stones. My hand comes to rest on one, and the surface is cool, coarse, alive. It exhales into my palm, and the breath of the stone moves into me. It is not simply contact, it is a merging. The longer I remain, the more the boundary thins, until I feel the stone leaning back, meeting me.
Around me, the air stirs with its own rhythm. It does not come and go but circles, climbs, folds back on itself, weaving with the shape of the hill. A brush of coolness across my cheek carries with it the taste of mineral, as though the rock itself has risen into the air. My mouth waters, unexpected, as if drinking from some hidden spring. The breath of the cairn becomes my own, and within it, a memory flickers, of hands that placed these stones, of voices that once rose in chant, of firelit faces lifted to the sky.
I remain here longer, allowing the hush to deepen. Shadows shift as clouds drift, and light paints slow-moving patterns across the hill. The wind rises again, tracing its fingers along the slabs and slopes. I follow its path with my senses, not only hearing but feeling where it pauses, where it leans, where it speaks. There is no rush. Time loosens its grip. Here, I remember how to listen.
And as I stand at the edge of the great cairn, I sense the echo of ceremony. Not loud, not performed, but present in the bones of the place, footsteps worn into the ground, breath once shared in silence, arms lifted in alignment with stars long passed. I do not need to know the words; they are already in me. In the rhythm of my breath, in the stillness of my stance, the ceremony lives on.
The cairn does not demand. It invites.
And when the moment completes itself, I release it gently. The breath I carry falls back into the hill like a cloak slipping to the ground, or rises upward, dissolving into the wide, shifting sky, yet always, always remains.
The summit does not grow quiet. It was always quiet. The silence was waiting for me to join it. And now, as I take one step back, and then another, I carry nothing and everything with me, woven, dissolved, remembered.
TK (with CI)
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