I am in the passenger seat of my traveling companion’s car and we are bumping along a narrow and winding road through Ireland’s Connemara in the Western part of the country. I feel like I am on a carnival ride because back home in the States when I sit in the left front seat I am in the driver’s seat. Here in Ireland, when you sit on the left side there is no steering wheel. And the traffic comes at you from the right side. It messes with your head. And then there’s the vast landscape before me and I feel even more confused. And awestruck. And speechless. The person driving the car and I are not talking now, although up to now we’ve been talking all the time for days. But now we are silent, like we’ve suddenly come off a busy city street and into a big cathedral full of glorious stained glass windows with the sun streaming through them and picking up dust motes in thick shafts of colored light. What we are looking at now is a window into eternity and we are falling into it and the mind seems to go blank. Or perhaps not blank but so full wonder you just don’t know what to say to express yourself. It’s as if silence is the only valid response.