Ireland 2017 - Days 1 and 2

I had a couple false starts setting words to screen for a blog post or two.  But now I’m sitting in a pub with my laptop and my first assignment of the day is done and submitted and only half my cider is consumed… so I thought I would capture a few details of the last two days worth noting.

I’ve wanted to come back to Ireland since before I left the last time.  Blessedly, the last time wasn’t even two years ago.  Considering my last gap was ten years, I consider that a pretty good accomplishment.  And maybe it is a good step in the direction of a future wish.  In any case, here I am.  Happy.  In new… and yet very familiar territory.

I needn’t bore you with the tedious details of my travel.  Just a few delights of note of that first (very long) day.  I like flying.  I feel my heart smiling through my pores when the plane takes off.  That could have everything to do with the fact most of my plane travel is to England or Ireland… and the satisfaction of my ancestors’ yearning to cross back across the Atlantic.  I think about that when I go.  How they spent a life’s savings to get where I live now (give or take a couple dozen miles) and never got to go home again.  Maybe it was no longer home to them.  Or maybe they yearned to see it again until they left this earth.  I’ll never know that… unless my yearning has passed down with my DNA.  Maybe it has.  Maybe that’s just my romantic imagination.

Anyway, I was talking about travel, wasn’t I?  Well there isn’t much else to note about the first day beyond the fact that it went relatively smoothly.  But it was a long day and I was dog tired by the time I got to the hotel.  I broke down and lay down for a nap, figuring the longer daylight (and there was sun!) meant I could get up for a walk around 7 – then 8 then 9 o’clock.  But I slept through it all and waited until the next day to leave my room.

I’m here for a writing workshop, if you didn’t know.  But things weren’t due to kickoff until Monday evening.  That gave a me a full day of possibility.  Well, the possibility that one has without a car in a small town.  It isn’t as small as my town.  There is more than just two stores selling liquor and guns.  And here, there is the Atlantic Ocean.

So I decided to go for a walk – the perfect remedy for a long plane ride and 16 hour recovery ‘nap.’  I saw the rain wasn’t expected until the afternoon.  So I packed up my bag, threw on my coat and walked in search of a path to the ocean.  There aren’t many sidewalks in these parts.  If you’ve ever driven or rode in a car in Ireland, you may understand why you may be apprehensive as a pedestrian on these roads.  I kept my eye out as I walked along for sure footed places to step onto when cars passed me, having to remember to walk on the right side (not the left) to be visible for cars.  But it always required a recalibration of thought when I heard a car come up behind me.  Fortunately, it wasn’t too great a distance before I found the road that led to ‘beaches and dunes.’  (I should note the signs here are bilingual – as they are in several parts of Ireland.  But here it seems Irish is the preference.  I don’t know if it is my recent attempts to start to understand the language or the fact I work where we increasingly attempt to make our signage bilingual that this resonated with me a lot more.  I think it is amazing for how unapologetic and proud it is – that two languages can exist on the same surface.  Maybe I’ll write more on that later.) 

The road reminded me a little of some beach roads I’ve seen on the Cape.  Except this one went through a small neighborhood at first, then through rolling green fields.  I passed three – maybe four – house ruins.  They weren’t really abandoned.  They were obviously on someone’s property, but left as a reminder of another Ireland perhaps?  I’ll have to ask about that.

It is a different landscape from the one that won my heart over in Connemara two summers ago – or even the Northeast coast.  But the beach(es) were magnificent.  So clean and vast and unadulterated.  Very few people, so I had the luxury to idle and stare across the water.   It wasn’t too warm, so I didn’t pay attention to the way the sun reddened my skin -  a foolish time to neglect my Irish DNA.

I spent four hours walking to and from and along the beach.  I don’t have such interests in New England.  Maybe because our beaches are so crowded.  Maybe because they don’t have the awe.  Or maybe it’s because it is home and I don’t get it.  I had hoped to capture some of that awe by sitting with a notebook and writing on a rock or the sand.  But once I stopped walking and settled, the flies found me.  Flies are annoying well enough.  But I

confess, I am somewhat superstitious about killing those flies as well – so the writing just didn’t happen.  I did put my head in the novel long enough, though, to find a rock

where my characters’ story begins and realize it will be by the ocean and not a lake.  And thus… Donegal.  So, my last trip to Ireland I found the end of this epic story that has to be written.  I guess you could say this time around, I found the beginning.  That’s no small potatoes.

I came back for a late lunch/early supper when I discovered the delicious seafood chowder at the pub in the hotel.  To not eat seafood when the ocean is walking distance is foolish.  And to not have a Guinness to go with it, even more so.

The writing retreat started a few hours later.  And maybe I will come back to write on that later.  But now I have pay my check and head off to our next excursion.