If we’re lucky in our lives we get those few very precious days when Everything. Is. Perfect. You couldn’t ask for more. It could be a combination of location and travel companions and weather and your inner spirit, but everything clicks together for an unforgettable few hours.
For perhaps the second time in my life I had that day recently, in Ireland. We were three older women on our first trip to our ancestors' homeland and we were on an isolated island off County Kerry. Great Blasket Island Boat Trips had brought us from Dingle to the island to spend the night with a total of eight people on a three-mile long island.
Years ago I’d heard harpist and storyteller Patrick Ball tell the story of the elders on the island living in poverty but in their own world rich in Gaelic language and storytelling. The Irish Congested Districts Board removed everyone from the island, with its stone cottages and sheep, in 1953. Blasket islanders had no electricity, phones or medical services and all the young folks had left for a better life elsewhere. As Ball relates in “Fine Beauty of the Island” the islanders, now stuck on the mainland, knew their spirits turned into dolphins and swam back to Blasket when they passed away.
We were staying in Peig Sayers old house. She’d been gone 60 years but her stories were transcribed into “An Old Woman’s Reflections” which I’d read before traveling to the island. We arrived to a coal fire warming the cottage, sunshine, and a breathtakingly beautiful view of off-shore islands, seals on the beach, sheep grazing, red hares leaping around, and no wind. It. Was. Perfect. We hiked around crumbling stone cottages and wondered what it was like when 100 people once lived here.
Eighty percent of the island is state owned but 20% remains in private hands. The only restroom and water was in a tiny café in the building next to us, privately owned. With no electricity and only a propane stove the café’s offerings were limited to snacks but they served us oatmeal, fruit and tea for breakfast and it had charming hosts. Since the sun raises shortly after 5 a.m. and the sun set after 9 p.m. we had plenty of time to explore. An old one-room school was being converted into a visitor center by the government with careful restoration underway. The boat trip from Dingle and back featured dolphins leaping out of the water as they raced alongside the 12 passenger boat.
We wandered Ireland for a week after that and, of course, never saw all we wanted. As a bookseller retired after 28 years with Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino I’d had the opportunity to meet Irish authors Niall Williams and Christine Breen at work a dozen years ago. We’d maintained a correspondence and they had invited us to tea. The home in County Clare, near Kilrush, was exquisite and inviting with beautiful gardens but they would soon be dealing with a problem all to common in Ireland…wind generators.
All over Ireland hilltops are covered in wind spinners. While ecological wind generating equipment is not a good neighbor. While a sheep grazing can walk away from a noisy turbine engine in its field when energy producers move into more settled areas you can’t pick up your house and move it away. A wind generator tower was proposed to be installed 500’ from Niall and Christine’s bedroom window. All legal challenges had been exhausted and they were undecided about their future. They were lovely hosts to us for an hour as we drank tea and talked books.
Traveling in a foreign country I always like to look for simple things that are different. The universal sign for toilets has a woman figure in a fluffy skirt that looked like an umbrella. Our rental car had a transparent sign on the windshield on how to drive through a rotary, or roundabout as we call them. These traffic calming devices replace stoplights, which in Ireland are only seen in urban centers. Road travel was on narrow lanes with no center line. We followed the TomTom navigation unit’s instructions with care. Freeways were toll roads. The driver watched for “Unstable Road Edges” and “Abrupt Verges” and we were warned to “Watch For Descending Mists.” We were passed on the motorway by a semi hauling racing pigeon cages. Ahead was a “Confusion Junction.” Roadside fruit stands sold strawberries and new potatoes.
Someone will have to explain to me about the role of Turkish Barbers found in every town. Schoolboys have short hair but they have intricate designs shaved into their hair…the work of those Turkish hairdressers? Many shopkeepers were men and everyone was friendly to tourists. Washcloths were never seen in bathroom linens.
Being a tourist I loved the age of everything. Stone walls surrounding pastures looked like they’d been in place for hundreds of years. Houses could be built close to riverbanks because flooding patterns had been established years ago and watersheds tended to be very small. English ivy grew up anything, including telephone poles. Clothes washers and dryers are set up outdoors in grocery store parking lots so you can shop and wash clothes simultaneously. Gas stations have machines offering air, water, vacuuming and fragrance for a coin. Gas and diesel prices varied no more than three cents anywhere in Ireland.
Town folks were often out picking up litter so their community could maintain their “Tidy Town” award. Every item on a dining menu had a complete allergen statement attached to it. I still need to look up and see what the allergen Lupin is. The best fish and chips we had was at Danno’s in Dingle. Salad comes with no dressing nor is any offered. If it’s a dessert item it will, taste better with whipped sweetened clotted cream. Tea water is always hot enough. People still read big thick newspapers on a daily basis.
In Mendocino we hate gorse as an invasive species. In Ireland it is cultivated in hedgerows. Ten percent of Ireland is forested and commercial forestry takes place with “clearfelling” and the state manages 70% of the forest parks. Dingle harbor was being dredged to allow cruise ships entry and locals were happy about this. Artificial color in food was forbidden. Blood pudding served with breakfast is actually good.
My sister and I now have photos of us standing on the church steps of three houses of worship our ancestors attended in the 19th century in Clongeen, Carrickmacross and Cootehill. We heard the birdsong in the church cemeteries and saw the lay of the land they left 130 years ago to move to Philadelphia. We don’t know why they left the old country but we’ve seen those places now and are happy.
The bad thing about travel to Ireland is you want to go back. There will be a next time I’m sure.
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