I turned around in the open air abbey and there he was, wearing an orange wool sweater he’d bought from one of the Wicklow vendors. His white hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a coat over the sweater and a smile that radiated goodwill.

“They are going to put a glass ceiling over this and turn it into a café,” he said. Or that’s what I recall him saying. I looked at him skeptically. We were a body’s length away from ancient weathered tombstones. Some marking the graves of former Rectors.

“Really?” I replied, expressing my doubts.

He grinned but did not give anything away, leaving the question hanging between us. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Oregon,” I said.

“I lived in Oregon,” he said, his Irish brogue manifesting itself in the last syllables.

“Whereabouts?”

“Eugene.”

“Aw! I should’ve guessed. You look like someone who would fit right into Eugene. Still could.”

And he did. The ponytail nearly as much an identifier as the wool sweater and scarf. “I’m Karen,” I said, putting my hand forward in greeting. He offered his name – “J.J.” – and then the information that he was a remanent of the Hare Krishnas out of Eugene. He’d been there years ago as part of his spiritual path.

 J.J. grew up in Mayo, not far from Galway. He can be found in the afternoons feeding the birds in St. Stephen’s Green, or having a meal at his favorite vegetarian restaurant. But once a week he boards the bus for Wicklow.

“I hike here once a week for my health,” he explained.

It’s easy to see why hiking the hills around Wicklow would improve anyone’s health. Beauty abounds. We’ve arrived at the tail-end of summer’s season. The ferns which carpet the hillside have turned an amber ale color. Look closely and you can still find tiny purple pearls clinging to the stems, late-blooming heather showing off.

He knows these hills, knows their dips and rises, their curves and straightways, and the best paths leading to ancient caves. He probably even knows where the field of four-leaf clovers can be found, where to visit fairies in their homes, and where the unicorns gather to practice climbing rainbows.

Fairy trees are sacred in Ireland. It is said that harm will come to those who destroy a fairy tree. Roadways will circumvent a fairy tree in order to not bring a curse upon those building it. Fairy trees can be easy to spot as they are often protected by the pile of rocks around their base, or a protective boulder wall.

One has to ponder how much damage have we wrought upon ourselves by not protecting the fairy trees in our own land? Silly thoughts to some, I suppose, but in the world in which we now abide, one has to question: Is anything sacred anymore? Trees? Or the children who believe in fairies and unicorns? Or is the answer to the slaughter of some always going to be slaughter more?

I don’t care if you pray the Hare Krishna or the Rosary, the Lord’s Prayer or a St. Patrick’s Blessing, pray for peace, pray for the hearts of man to be enlarged, pray for angels to attend to the distraught and fearful. Pray for the parents grieving their children and the children bereft of their parents.

Praying may seem as nonsensical to you as a four-leaf clover bringing your good luck, or as elusive as finding a field of unicorns at the end of a rainbow, but I’d ask you to consider: How rationale is it to stop killing by killing more? Isn’t it all inhumane? And is inhumanity cured by more inhumanity?

As for me and my house, we pray while putting rocks around the fairy trees.