SOFT DAY . . .

Today's travels and adventures could have been dampened by the rainy and misty weather constituting what is known as a "soft day" in Ireland--but we "weathered on" and had a great day of exploring north of Dublin in the area known as the Boyne Valley. . . .

We boarded a tour bus at Busarus--the central bus station in Dublin--and headed northerly, enjoying droll commentary from our bus driver en route. Our first stop was Monasterboice, the site of an ancient monastic settlement that is home to three impressive 10th-century Celtic Celtic crosses and a round tower built to ward off Viking invasions in the 8th century. The tallest of the crosses, known as Muiredach's High Cross, is generally regarded as the finest example of a Celtic Cross in the entire country. It features carvings of stories from both the Old Testament and the New Testament and may have been used as a teaching tool for illiterate worshippers.

From there we went to the ruins--or the remains--of Mellifont Abbey, a monastery founded by the Cistercian order of monks in 1142. We were given a very engaging tour of the site; our guide shared us the history not just of the Abbey and of the Cistercian order but also of Mellifont's later use as a private home. I think that we were all surprised by how interestingly complex such a history--of mostly crumbling ruins--can be. . . .

Our final stop of the day took us even deeper into the past than our first two stops. Given that American history (as most of us think of it) goes back about 250 years, we need to adjust our thinking considerably to fathom even 1300 years. Well, let's try 5000 years, which is the age of the awe-inspiring passage grave of Newgrange that we visited first virtually (at an interpretive center) and then truly via a shuttle bus. Newgrange is the largest of a series of passage graves--large ceremonial burial mounds--found mostly in the Boyne Valley of Co. Louth. Predating the Egyptian pyramids by about 2000 years, they are pretty much contemporaneous with Stonehenge--and those reference points are apt in another way: the feats of engineering involved in the construction of Newgrange, which would have taken numerous generations to complete, are just as mind-boggling as those involved with those other iconic sites. Even more mind-boggling is that the engineering incorporated precise awareness of the winter solstice into the construction of the passage into the heart of the tomb: every year on the three days of the solstice (around December 21st), the rising sun shines down the passage for around 17 minutes. Our fine guide explained this to us in detail . . . and then created a reenactment of it for us inside the tomb. Most of us were left without words to describe the sensation and the mystery of it all--the sensation OF the mystery of it all.