The four green fields blog2: a stone circle, the ring of Kerry and beyond
[A steeple in Kenmare. Photo is mine.]
We were preparing to depart Kenmare, but I had found one more place I wanted to visit. The Kenmare Stone Circle. It was a short walk from our hotel, down Main Street (sounds so American), past a hundred pubs, fifty Aran Island Woolen/Weaver shops full of scarves, and Clan throws. If you’re cold and thirsty and you can’t find a solution, than you have some serious perception issues. I can’t help you. Turn left and walk along a narrow street lined with pastel painted houses, side-by-side with no yards and fewer places to park an Audi or a Clio or a Citroen. Very soon we were standing at the small booth where you put a few euros in an honesty box and were handed a pen and two pieces of paper.
A few steps away, partly hidden by a crescent of trees was a stone circle. Fifteen stones, placed in a nearly perfect circle and enclosing a boulder dolman which is considered quite rare.
[Stone circle with the boulder dolman in the center. Photo is mine.]
I don’t see the need to go into stone circles here. Everyone on the planet knows about Stonehenge. Briefly, they were built for religious and/or astronomical reasons. This circle is thought to be aligned to the solstice. Next trivia game, I suggest you go with solstice.
However, stone circles, large or small, complete or broken, are not trivial in any way. They were constructed with 2,000 year old engineering knowledge and without equipment. The labor alone is jaw-dropping. It’s a testament to the strong beliefs of a pagan society. I believe that such structures were less a way to pay tribute to a god, and more of a way to predict eclipses and sunrises which were in turn linked to seasonal planting and hunting. And to tell the group when it was time to pack up and relocate.
We are all related in one way or another to a wandering people. Their DNA is our DNA. We too were immigrants, a millennia or two ago.
But why were we given the paper and pen? That is made obvious when you approach the two hawthorn trees.
[If you wanted, you could write a wish on the paper and tie it to a branch. Photo is mine.]
I read a few of the messages. They ranged from sad and hopeful wishes: “I wish that my aunt Pauline will get better” and “I pray my niece would stop drinking” to selfish and cruel wishes: “I wish my sister will suffer.”
People can be strange. Bitterness is common, suffering is universal, loneliness is epidemic, but why wish any sort of pain on another human…and one that you know or are related to?
[Wishes on a hawthorn tree. Photo is mine.]
So, after writing my wish (I won’t reveal what I wrote, I’ll just say that I mentioned compassion and love), it was time to turn our rental car around, program the SatNav, and head for the Ring of Kerry.
This route is most likely the most popular single road in Ireland. Everyone and their cousin from Topeka who come to the Emerald Island, will at some point find themselves on the Ring. We found this fact to be true. That’s why there are dozens of tour coaches, yes, coaches driving the narrow roadway that can barely handle two Fiats. As I passed those behemoths, I would close my eyes for a moment, bracing myself, and listening for the crunch of metal on metal. To me, my side rear view mirror felt like it stuck out three feet into the other land. I kept my window rolled up because I didn’t want to feel the shards of the mirror glass hit my face.
When it was over, when we had reached Glenbeigh on the west coast of the Kerry Peninsula, I exhaled for the first time in 3 hours and 48 minutes. But, vehicle damage aside, the beauty of the Ring of Kerry is beyond mere words, my vocabulary to truly describe the ocean meeting the rocky coast and the verdant hills. If you drive it clock-wise like we did, the seacoast was off to your left, beyond breathtaking expanses high above the valley floor. I just couldn’t drive by a lay-by without getting out, taking a photo and breathing the humid and salty air. And on your drive, on your right are hills that would be called mountains in some places. Large sweeping green fields and stone walls. White cottages scattered about, some isolated and a few in small clusters, never big enough to be a village.
Well, what am I trying to say? What am I trying to write that will excite you, dear reader? Here’s a cliche: I’m at a loss for word. & Words fail me. But words are not allowed to fail me. I write blogs. I write. But I’m nothing if I’m not honest. So, bearing that in mind, I can say that the stark beauty of the Ring is for poets and writers far greater than me. I look into the misty distance and I see a field of green, the tone, the hue, is a mile different than the field just beyond the stone wall. And that field is totally unique in it’s own gentle apple green. And across the road there are three fields that share and blend, one to the other, the same olive shade. See, beyond that small shed, it’s sage. Over there is a hectare of the deepest and purest moss. There’s basil and juniper and seaweed green. And if I squint, hard enough to tear up, I can make out a grey stone walled field of Kelly green.
I’ve read there are twenty-eight different shades of green in Ireland. Maybe. But I can say that if Vermont ever fades, Ireland has enough Chlorophyll for all the wide world.
[Nearing the tip of the Ring of Kerry. Off in the distance, somewhere, is Skellig Michael, a small island with a 6th century monastery. It’s unclear to me whether the two islands to the right are those islands. Photo is mine.]
[Our road winds over the mountain at the right. Photo courtesy of Mariam Voutsis.]
By mid-afternoon,I had spent more time than I wanted behind the wheel. I need out of the car. I needed air. Patiently I waited for a proper lay-by. I pulled over and walked up a short distance. It was quiet. I felt strong in my legs, like decades had fallen away from my muscles. It was peaceful. I sat on a rock and leaned over. There was a world of life all around me. I was sitting on living organisms. I looked deeper into the moss and wild flowers.
[Water droplets caught on a spider web. Photo is mine.]
[A hundred different organisms in and around a rock. Photo is mine.]
A few kilometers above Glenbeigh, on the western edge of the Kerry Peninsula, we pass through Killorglin. This is probably end of the famous drive. From here we continue through Tralee and northeastward to the Tarbert ferry. It was a long drive. Not a lot of kilometers, but it was all on a winding road, a bit too narrow at times, with plenty of stops for the loo, water and just to stretch our legs. At Tarbert ferry we had a 14 minute wait to board (we were the third car in the queue) the boat and cross the Shannon River. Old decommissioned coal or peat power plants sat with weeds growing in the parking lots beside the giant wind mills. Ireland is rapidly moving away from fossil fuel toward the future, the bright future of renewable energy.
I drove off the ferry and turned right to drive the 30 or so kilometers to Ennis. This is where I am writing this post, at the Woodstock Hotel (a spacious golf resort). We’ve just returned to our room after a curry dinner in the pub. We are tired and sore from two days hiking through and over the world famous Burren.
What, you may say, is the Burren?
That’s the next blog post. It’ll be from Galway.
Meanwhile, here’s something that I find delightful to watch and listen to…
