6-2-2018 AD
Fort Farm House B&B
Dingle Peninsula
Kerry County Ireland
The ocean is hidden in fog
and rain promises, hiding its bulk except in our memory. It is a lazy morning, birds building nests
outside my window, Ireland green and the air thick with seas. It is a very quiet morning, green and sea
mist dampening morning down to hush.
Yesterday was spent by the sea, The Ring of Kerry, a winding road around
a great peninsula pushed to the edge by the ragged lands rising high
above. It is a scruffy land, not a
smooth spot to be had, turning and twisting, gnarled as an old hand, rising up
great slopes often hidden in the clouds and divided everywhere by long dark
stone fences. No one could walk this
land and think it prime settlement potential but they have. Houses, though sparse, are here, in every
small plot that can support them and many that seem to deny any edge to
human. These are a hearty lot and have
survived by pure grit and gristle. (A
farmer is leading a herd of milk cows down the road between the ocean, and me
single file and lowing, caring not for the human filed cars waiting. Everyone is trained.) What they don’t claw out of the ground they
glean from the sea as tiny hamlets occasionally appear in a hard won cove
reminding me of beautiful lichen holding on to a mammoth tree knowing full well
from whence its “living hood” cometh. But
for all its harshness it is serenely beautiful.
You can see a square of green way up a slope where a family has held on
for generations and slowly smoothed the gnarled slope to earth that can graze a
sheep or host a garden, they build a stone wall around it, build a hearty home
and I think must often look at the mountain and stare at the sea and proudly
know a truce. But as many as you see
neatly made you see as many long abandoned, stone remnants like tattered
scrapbooks holding faded dreams of some family that let go and moved on,
hounded by this corner of the earth that will not abide anything but strong
shoulders, steeled hearts and genes to pass it on. One thing these people do is illicit
admiration; I feel a great kinship with them for how they have chosen to make
do, to make their homes, to put down roots in soil that fights them with every
stone, to say, “come what may we are here and here we will be.” And the aged and old wear it, it is on and in
them, they have been shaped and molded by the grit of it all, bent and slow,
wrinkled and rough, hewn to polished humanity, they wear the landscape as a
spiritual shawl, wrapping their old bones in warmth and hope.
A gift for this land is the sea,
which is crystal clear, as blue as their ballads and as green as their
hills. It is Caribbean in its clarity,
surprisingly mild in temp but you can tell its raging potential. The stone named Ireland is slowly being
smoothed away by its relentless restlessness.
Everywhere the two meet there is beauty made in the conflict as one
gives way and one carves on. It is
everywhere—As I write this I am aware that it is not only the shore line but
the entire rock Ireland that is being sculpted everywhere the land meets the
cosmos. It is like this land, above all
other lands I have trekked, every square inch is in this aesthetic relationship
with the other elements of water, fire and sky.
The water carves and colors it, the sun works tirelessly to fight off
the damp to warm the soils potential and the sky seems to whip it all up and
push it and pull it and draw it down and around it all and the resulting
orchestrated chaos is sheer beauty. And
while I am writing I am reminded that it is true of the humans and all they
do. As if they know their strongest
defense against these relentless elements is stone and stoned will and so they
build, build for as long as records have been kept, with the stone the earth
holds and the wind and water expose. And
what they build is also telling, they build homes and they build churches and
when all is said and done that is what there is for all of us—us, earth, God
and little in between.
I am reminded that is the
truth and The Truth, this island is reminding me, will set me free.
Side notes:
Our six-hour journey here
yesterday was filled with all I wrote above and was culminated by this. The last ten kilometers of our trip was over
one of the great hills separating the inland from the sea. It was made over a narrow strip of paved road
barely able to host all four wheels of our small car. It was steep and narrow, not a tree or hostel
or any sign of humans except for the occasional sheep randomly grazing or lying
by the trail. As we were going up,
perhaps two miles up the slope we came upon an old man pushing what looked like
an older bike. He was bent and slow but
up he was going. As far as I could see
there was nothing ahead for miles but bare hill and winding road. As we traveled on, perhaps another mile or so
we came upon another old man, walking against us down the slope, hat on,
pausing to let us pass because the road was not wide enough to accommodate us
both. We drove on over the pass never
seeing any sign of humanity. I cannot
imagine why either man was traversing this very difficult and long trail but
they both must have been equal to the task because no one would start this
trail without first having considered the cost…and they both did.
One of the great adventures
of this trip is finding ourselves on very narrow lanes lost in gnarled stone
and moss covered overgrowth or up ridges and along paths that only sheep trod. The richness of the first and the vastness of
the second make nature trails of travel.
I am always having the
thought that it is impossible to adequately convey with words the adventure we
are experiencing. It is so foreign to me
that describing it can’t even inform me of what I have actually experienced.
Yesterday we spent hours up
in the mountains by the sea hidden by fog, on narrow winding lanes, behind
hedges and boulders and exposed on wind swept ridges. When we would come upon a home it was like a gifted
blaze that you were indeed, still on the trail.
When we came upon a village it was like a neat mountain hostel that
promised we were surviving.
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| The road where we met the two old men walking. |
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