On a sunny day in the Spring, we pulled the car into a gravel parking area at the end of a remote peninsula in Ireland. The sea shimmered in the light beyond the deep green fields lined and dotted with grey rock walls and white sheep. We opened the gate and crossed a field, and then another, and another, carefully following the faint paths worn by the feet of those who had come here before us. Sometimes we had to make a choice—it seems not all of our predecessors had gone the same way. Or did hooves make one trail, and feet another? Eventually the grassy fields gave way to rocky hills, and we scrambled up one side and down the other where the grass and mud and boulders and the sound of the sea all blend together into a kind of otherworldly magic and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t looking at an illustration of the Wild Lands of Narnia—I was in the real, tangible, wild of the actual world.

As we came down the slope of the last rocky hill I had to remind myself again, because there in front of me was one of the most perfectly ruined castles I’ve ever seen—no fantasy illustrator could have drawn it better. Three towers stood, each unique and dishevelled in its own particular ways, with a half-broken wall connecting them across a narrow pass of land between a sea cliff on one side and a lake on the other. As we went through the ancient arches and crumbling doorways, we imagined what life was like in this remote headland more than 800 years ago when Donagh “the Migrator,” chieftain of the O’Mahony clan, established his last line of defence against the encroaching Normans. It worked. The O’Mahony’s remained securely at Three Castle Head for 400 years. But they’re gone now, and the land around their bastion is only inhabited by sheep. The threatening Normans are gone, as well, so the old ruined towers have for the last several centuries been proudly defending a remote headland that no one is interested in attacking.

We were only passing visitors, taking it in, walking away. We came to feel the weight of the long centuries wash over us like a wave where the unspoken stories of innumerable lives still cling to the walls with the moss. We could hear the echo of their histories, but no matter how hard we strained, we couldn’t make out the individual words.

All I know for sure is that I am a passing visitor in a long story, a story with so many characters and so many adventures beyond my reach and knowledge, more forgotten than remembered, still hanging heavy in the air. All I know is that the fairy tales are more true than I thought—I walked through one of the illustrations—and I’m a character here, as well, and my story is part of it all. Many stories, many lives have passed this way before me, have impacted me and shaped my world in ways that I don’t understand. Many more will come after me. The time of Donagh and the Normans is past, and my time has come, and my time will also, just as surely as theirs, pass. At Three Castle Head, I felt the weight of the past, even if I could not understand it. I can hardly understand my own story, much less how it fits with theirs and everyone else’s, and everyone yet to come. I feel the rush of history surging around me and I thank God that the Author of all of this knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows exactly where history—his story—is going. He knows how to get there. He knows every one of his characters. He cares. He sees. He remembers.