When Professor Edward Callahan told my Irish Literature class that the Irish mind resembles interwoven Celtic art, without a clear beginning or end, I recognized my own often wandering mind. I was delighted to learn I belonged to a greater cultural tradition.
I had spent some summers as a child with my family in Ireland. I climbed my first mountain, rode my first horse and sailed the Shannon. I recall one magical afternoon walking a Sligo backroad with an Irish cousin. We stopped at a thicket to eat blackberries and collect rushes to weave a Brigid’s cross.
As a college student recollecting those lovely summers, I sensed how the connection with nature had helped shape the Irish mind and, therefore, Irish art. I remembered how the brambles surrounding graveyards resembled the interlacing on the Celtic crosses within. I thought back to swimming in the sea off Donegal, feeling I belonged to the endless waves.
Applying to Holy Cross, I was asked to write an essay about my favorite word. I chose “beauty” because it seemed expansive enough to encompass ocean, mountain, river and everything else about which I cared. I chose to study literature in college because I wanted to be surrounded by beautiful stories. I still do.
This search for beauty led me to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after graduation to produce feature stories for a radio station in Nome, Alaska. There, on the land known in Iñupiaq as Sitnasuak, I found a culture and connection to nature as beautiful as I had known in Ireland.
I saw similarities everywhere. I witnessed lore transmitted from elders to youth in Alaska Native culture, as in Irish culture, through song and dance. The umiak, a traditional boat of subsistence fishermen, brought to mind the Irish currach. I harvested wild blueberries from the tundra, as I had blackberries along Irish lanes. Friends and I soaked in hot springs, places of gathering and healing, like the sacred wells of Ireland. I was as charmed by Alaskan huskies as I had been by Connemara ponies, even competing in a newcomers’ sled dog race.
I often interviewed Iñupiaq and Yup’ik elders to learn their stories of sorrow, resilience, humor and wisdom. I recognized a strength and beauty in those retaining their foodways and ancestral relationship with land and sea.
A decade after leaving Alaska, I wanted to learn how to grow food sustainably so I apprenticed for a growing season at the Center for Agroecology, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Forty apprentices lived in tents under cypresses on the edge of the UCSC farm overlooking Monterey Bay. We cooked meals together, shared poetry and music and created bouquets from flowers we had grown.
The wild spaces on the farm were as much a part of my education as working in the fields and gardens. I listened to the same owl each night and hoped to never meet the cougar who frequented a nearby ravine. Like the hare’s corner on traditional Irish farms, left wild for the hare to build her nest and raise her young, our instructors taught us the importance of growing extra flowers and berries to feed pollinators and birds. We could not just tend plants for human needs. The farm belonged to nature as much as the owl and cougar did. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I learned Irish online with Scoil Scairte, or Hedge School. Scairte is Irish for thicket, as well as shelter. In a time of global unease, we gathered together to connect with heritage and each other. We grew in knowledge as our ancestors had during Penal Times in actual thickets. As I spoke this ancient language rooted in nature, I grew more native shrubs and flowers in my yard to provide food and habitat for the more-than-human world. In return, visiting birds brought me joy.
As a student of Callahan’s in his last semester at Holy Cross, I was impressed that he was moving to Montana to teach at Carroll College in Helena. I felt I would like a similar adventure and purpose when I became an elder.
Reflecting on my life’s journey, I am grateful for time spent with nature. Looking forward, I would like to retire in Ireland, where I hold citizenship, to speak Irish more often and volunteer with rewilding efforts.
Although Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle, little of the temperate rainforest that once covered the island remains. According to the Biodiversity Intactness Index, Ireland is ranked 227 out of 240 countries.
Irish nature restoration charities, such as Hometree and Native Woodlands Trust, are making considerable efforts to protect and expand the remnants of old-growth forests by fencing them off from grazing animals and removing invasive species. Both organizations have distributed thousands of saplings grown from the seeds of these heritage trees to individuals and communities across the island. More farmers and gardeners are leaving corners wild again for the hare.
As biodiversity returns, the Irish language, although still classified by UNESCO as endangered, is also undergoing a revival with the increasing popularity of Irish language films, books, podcasts and Pop-Up Gaeltachts, informal gatherings of Irish language speakers and learners. The country’s new president, Catherine Connolly, spoke in November 2025 about how Irish is part of the solution: “It’s an absolute gift to us and it’s an invitation to look at the world through a different eye. And there isn’t that false distinction in the Irish language between the person and nature.”
I carry a 10 pence keychain as a reminder of my dream. An image of the leaping salmon of knowledge of Fenian mythology is on one side. An image of the 15th-century Brian Boru harp is on the other. I’ve seen the actual harp, constructed from native willow and oak, on display at Trinity College Dublin. Without salmon, we would not have the legend. Without trees, we would not have our music. Without nature, who would we even be?
Life is uncertain, and I may not actually retire to Ireland. Yet whenever I tend the wild, or speak my ancestors’ ecocentric language, I feel part of a greater creative endeavor, weaving time and place, spirit and story, beauty and community together. We are an ongoing collective vision for the healing of Éire, our Earth and ourselves.
Judith Moran ’91 works as a K-12 substitute teacher near Denver. During school breaks, she joins neighbors to share seeds and planting stock and help in each other’s gardens where native plants and animals can thrive. She occasionally writes for publications on Medium.
