Greetings, friends. (LXV)

Greetings, friends. Today I’d like to talk about a few other things that Besha and I encountered in County Clare in Ireland.

First of course was the Burren itself, large as life. Sea creatures leech calcium from the ocean and combine it with carbon to form hard calcite shells. These shells deposit on the ocean floor, and over geological timescales, become compacted into limestone. Continental drift moves these particular massive blocks of limestone north from the Equator and up above the surface of the water, where they become the bedrock of County Clare. Glaciers and rain containing dissolved acids weather the limestone, causing it to cleave in enormous fractures. Then about 4,000 years ago, for reasons to do with climatic shifts and probably human habitation, a bunch of West Clare’s topsoil washed away.

The result is the Burren. Words don’t really do it justice. It’s karst. I love a good karst landscape. The interior of Puerto Rico where the steep sided valleys formed the dish of the Arecibo radiotelescope. The cenotes of the Yucatan. The green hills of West Virginia. Who doesn’t love a good karst landscape?

Besha and I hiked a five mile loop up and down the side of a limestone hill one day. We left a few euros at the “Holy Well” at the bottom, where someone had left a pile of hazel walking sticks for a donation. The Holy Well itself was a burbling spring flowing out of a crack in the limestone into a pool lined with willow and hazel. The Burren is full of these things.

One of Cromwell’s henchmen said of the Burren:

[It] is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him...... and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.

Sheep and goats graze the hillsides still, working the grass from between the rock outcropping.

The limestone fractures into flat slabs, perfect for stacking. As my stepfather once said of New Hampshire, “They built stone walls mostly because they needed somewhere to put all that stone.” No doubt this is true of the Burren as well.

Nevertheless, in this wet and relatively temperate climate, the valleys of the Burren are damp and green, full of moss and hazel and nettles.

On another day, we took a day trip to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, out in Galway Bay. Its two younger siblings are Inishmaan and Inisheer. These three names come from Irish Gaelic where they mean, respectively, “Big Island,” “Middle Island,” and “Little Island”.

Inishmore is a little big to walk across, and we were feeling lazy, so we hired a hack and driver. This was a bit of a splash but by far a better way to see the island than a crowded coach. The driver’s name was Stephen, and he brought along a trainee by the name of Gary, who looked barely old enough to shave. The horse’s name, I think, was Lady. She was all business.

Meanwhile Stephen and Gary sat in front and muttered to one another in Gaelic, which was obviously their first language. Clearly we were deep in the Gaeltacht. Gary’s English accent was so thick that I could tell he was going to have a bit of a challenge giving tours of the island once he got his own gig.

They were nice guys, very friendly and accommodating. Stephen had obviously spent his entire life on the island and knew it better than the back of his hand. The tourist season only takes up half the year, he told us. The two of them spent the rest of the year doing construction work.

We passed two men planting potatoes. Stephen remarked that potato growing was still common on the island, in spite of the fact that you could buy a great big sack of potatoes at the Spar for a few euros. We passed Stephen’s house. He seemed to be doing all right for himself. The house even had solar panels, even though, as Stephen admitted, Inishmore doesn’t get much sun most of the year. He had gotten them on a “scheme” — which we puzzled over for a while, before we realized that he meant a government grant.

Stephen and Gary let us out for a bit at Dún Aonghasa, which is a largish prehistoric fortification situated on a cliff about 300 feet above the ocean. The fortress itself was a lot of piled up limestone, but the setting was pretty dramatic.

On the way back, we passed Stephen’s parents’ house, and he told us about how Colin Farrell stayed next door when The Banshees of Inisherin was filmed on the island — except that he kept calling it a “filum” because Gaelic phonology — and how his mum brought the filum star baked goods.

When we got back to town, we noticed Stephen’s surname painted on the side of a different horse drawn coach. It was his brother’s.

I’ll write more about County Clare tomorrow, because we had a real nice time.

If you’re reading this, I send my love. I’m definitely having a hard time getting back in the groove of writing. When I stop writing, you know one of two things is happening: Either I’m having too much fun, or I’m too depressed. Today I am neither, thank God. Ceterum censeo imperdiet vigilum cessandam est. Toodles!