Ireland - Chapter Five

County Clare

"The Burren affordeth not a piece of timber sufficient to hang a man, water in any one place to drown a man, or earth enough in any one part to bury him." Thomas Dingley (antiquary)

The Burren is such an alien landscape, yet to anyone who's been to the Aran Islands it's familiar – for it consists of the same bedrock, minus the seaweed that made a sort of topsoil on the islands. Instead, the Burren is ranges of hills that appear at first glance to be ripples of stone devoid of life. But within the grykes, the cracks that run through the stone, a strange mix of nutrient-rich plantlife grows, from those found in the tundra to those found in tropical climes. It is beautiful and strange and the cows here are very happy and fat despite the apparent lack of green.

There are ancient scottish settlements, many court tombs and passage tombs, and a considerable number of caves in this land. We drive around back roads and explore narrow lanes in search of cairns and tombs and other sites. We find some and don't find others.

Look under the big cow.

In many of the towns we see or hear rumors of the famous match making festival in Lisdoonverna, which we do not attend, and eventually we make our way to the Cliffs of Moher, something that's been on my Ireland-visit-wish-list since I was fifteen and found pictures of it that felt so achingly familiar they made me cry.

It's strange to see the visitors center there, though it is built as inconspicuously as possible, and the long pathways up the cliffs with railings for visitor's safety. I didn't expect anything so touristy. On our way there, we passed through Liscannor and a rock shop which described to us the history of stonemasonry in the area. It was pretty cool, and the visitor's center was much more interesting knowing where everything was quarried from and what stories the stone told. The visitor's center is cute – and some of the legends and lore of the cliffs is told there as well, though in no great detail.

The cliffs themselves are more impressive than any photograph can really do justice. I take a lot of pictures anyway, knowing how futile it is, and drink my fill as we wander along the railed in pathways. The corvids – sea crows? Who live by the cliffs, feeding off of whatever the tourists thrown away, are very taken with me. Halfway up the walk, one lands beside us on the rail, grey peeking through the black of his headfeathers, and fixes me so hard with one black eye that I freeze. I get the impression he has Something to Say, and I take two pictures.

He's only in the first one, and he didn't move until we'd made our way far up the path, staring after us from his perch on the rail all the while. Later, I tear up a piece of bread and feed it to the flock before bundling into the car.

We sit for a while, poring over maps and books, because we've hit all the stops we've wanted to make until Loughcrew, and the equinox isn't for another couple of days. We talk about going south, to Dingle and the Ring of Kerry, or further south still to Cork, but it seems so far out of our way. Finally, eyeing the local signs and making a last minute U turn, we head north a few kilometers and into the little town of Doolin. We heard there was good music there, and that you could take a ferry to the bottom of the cliffs. We take the very last ferry that day, in fact, after securing a couple of beds in one of Doolin's three hostels and hearing where “the best pipes player in all of ireland” will be playing that night.

I like boats, okay? And the Cliffs of Moher. I really like those. In all honesty, cold or not, the water was so unearthly beautiful, such a clear and vibrant shade, all folded in on itself into the depths, that I would have happily fallen in if I wasn't wearing a coat and boots that would have not liked it half as much as I. The cliffs of course were fantastic, impressive, soaring. I wish it hadn't been such a short trip, but on the way back in, a school of dolphins followed. Because my stepfather has a sailboat, my mom and I knew to look for them – but no one else believed us until several of the dolphins had been a bit obvious about it.

There's a merrily burning fire in the common room of the hostel when we get back. We roast ourselves by it for a while and make friends with some of our fellow hostel mates. Eventually it's time to go to the pub and get some dinner and hear some music – something Doolin is famous for. I flirt with the bartenders and for the first time on my trip, I have my sketchbook with me, and delight in making them both self conscious and flattered by attempting to draw their faces.

There will be sketches here when I scan them. I swear.

When the music happens, it's as good as promised, and I try to draw them too. As far as live music goes, we are lucky, because the pipes player is amazing – and the music itself makes me abandon my drawing and tease the closest group of young men until one of them dances with me. We entertain the crowd by jumping and spinning around, and afterwards I find he is Italian, and it's even funnier as neither of us are Irish. I'm too overheated to dance more for the time being, so I have another pint and find I am exhausted – yet as we make our way towards the door, I am caught up by an irish guy this time, who waltzes with me (or some approximation) until I am spun free towards the door. There, my mother is trying to show my sketchbook to the people standing there – one of whom is American, another an Australian businessman who is both retired and on a golf trip. When he tells me that he's into buying and trading stocks, his eyes slide away and his grin is half-guilty.

Our walk home in the dark reminds me of the Aran islands, and in the distance the waves make muted crashes and whisperings. Closer by, a little stream that winds through town rushes to meet those same waves. The stars are out, mostly, and we fall into our beds with the feeling that maybe we will stay another night here, in this pleasant place.

And we do. The next day, we find that two of the women in our dorm are also Reillys. They don't have a rental, so we drive them to the cliffs and drop them off while we go in search of a holy well that we both saw a sign for on the way (Bridget's Well) and also read about in the visitor's center for the cliffs (Since anyone can remember, on Bridget's festival days there have been very important happenings by the well from all around – even the Aran islanders would come in little boats in a pilgrimage to the well on these holy days.)

All the other pictures came out blurry.

Only this one, taken from outside the shrine, was in focus.

The Well here is, along side the one at Tara, one of the most sacred-feeling wells I have encountered in my trip. It is far more a shrine, and when we get there, someone is within the structure, so we wander around the graveyard. There are very old graves, a few bearing one of our ancestor-branches name, “Ahern”, which in our family tree is anglicized to “Heron”. A very narrow stream circles the graveyard.

There are stars in.

We then visit the shrine, which is cave-like and layered with decades of offerings, pictures, statuettes, and a hand-woven St Bridget's Cross or three. It throbs with energy, and as my mother goes to get the camera, I kneel before the well. There was no real intention in my mind before then, but as I kneel, words flow through my mind, intention, desire, a mantra I had no knowledge of until it was drawn from me as if by a gentle whirlpool. I touch the water to my forehead, my eyes, my lips, my ears, my throat, as I murmur the words that come to me, and it isn't until I speak them that I knew what it was I needed. I give thanks and stand as my mother returns, and give her time as well, because that's just the kind of place it is. When we leave, we both already know without needing to say so that the next place we want to go is the crescent of sandy beach in Liscannon.

Populated by locals walking their dogs or just walking, the beach is eerie but beautiful. The wind is fierce, so we don't walk for long - longer than we would have otherwise, though. When we get back to the car, we're just in time to pick our new Reilly-friends up, and we all go back to Doolin with equally satisfied experiences. When we return, we do a little grocery run with a pink-haired hitchhiker named Monica from Seattle who is very nice. Later, we do a pub crawl of sorts, listening to music for a while in one pub before moving on to the next. The stars are out again, and after everyone has gone to bed, I wander alone to a bridge that spans the river, and sing softly to let the wind and the water carry my voice to sea. It's a good night. In the morning, we leave for County Meath where, on the very western edge, the Loughcrew passage tombs sit on the highest hills in the county.

Thanks for sticking with me on the journey so far!