Magical Journeys: Part Four

We've finally arrived.

I forgot to mention in the last post that I had spent an hour on the phone just before bed, trying to track our luggage down. Calling the lost luggage line for AirCanada was an exercise in frustration; all calls were routed to a switchboard in some foreign land where English was not the native tongue, and all resulted in the same line: since AerLingus had been our last carrier, AerLingus was responsible for the return of our luggage. It didn't matter to anyone that I was certain AerLingus had never received our bags in the first place. Common sense was immaterial. There was no manager available to carry responsibility up the chain. In desperation, I found a number for the customer service at Toronto-Pearson.

And a human being with a soul actually picked up the phone.

Gemil. His name was Gemil, and he saved our vacation.

I explained the situation with him, as calmly and humorously as I could. He instantly latched onto the idiocy of everything we'd been told up to that point, validating all my frustrations and admitting that AirCanada had a very deliberate system of rerouting complaints to service agents on other continents who were completely incapable of fixing anything on the ground. There was no reliable way to call the airline desk at the airport itself...this, straight from the mouth of airport authority. I wonder how they sleep at night.

Gemil took five minutes to do what I had been begging AirCanada to do for half an hour - send someone to the baggage claim area to investigate personally. Within ten minutes he called me back. "We have your luggage. And now we are going to make sure you get it."

I almost wept with relief. But knowing where the bags were and acquiring them were two different animals.

"Look," I said, "we're on a pretty remote island. It's accessed twice a day by a ferry, and I think there's a tiny airstrip. We're only here for a couple of nights, and I want to make this as simple as possible, and not wind up with our bags chasing us all over two countries always getting there too late. We're going back to the airport in Dublin the day after tomorrow. Is it possible to just send them on to Dublin and have them held there, and we can pick them up on our way to Manchester?"

Yes, he said confidently. That was perfectly doable. He would do all in his power to make it happen... though he was careful to warn that there were certain boundaries within the airline structure that he couldn't overstep. He couldn't, you know, personally load our luggage onto a plane. However, he had now alerted the powers-that-be at bag claim, and they knew what was going on. The ball was rolling. He assured me I could contact him again with questions or concerns, and when I had hung up, I felt, for the first time, that there was hope of seeing our belongings before it was too late.

Secure in this hope, I slept well, and woke up early.

We'd left the window open just a crack, and all night the wind had sighed through it like soft distant thunder, so constant that I had no need of the white noise I usually turn on. Daylight was leaking in through the white curtain, soft and faintly blue.

I crawled out of bed and stood at the window; looked out on a world that was all green and grey. A slope of grey stone, black-streaked and scarred with long clefts, curved like a whale's back down to grey water under a grey sky. Grey walls, jagged-edged, chest-high, slithered across the green checkerboard of land beyond. It was totally silent but for the wind and the whistling cries of two gulls who wheeled just outside. The air was chilly, mist-speckled, and just the slightest bit briny.

Perfect.

Our host made us breakfast: eggs, bacon (and when the Irish say bacon what they really mean is ham, evidently), sausage, toast and marmalade. Kieran and his wife, whose tongue-twisting name I cannot remember now, chatted with us a little. They had seemed reserved the evening before, but warmed up as we talked. News on a Gaelic radio station ran in the background, softly sending out streams of unintelligible, musical syllables.

By 8 a.m. we were making our way down empty paths toward the main part of the village, which was mostly still asleep. Cows blinked at us, unconcerned, from within their stone-walled miniature pastures. Two older men were hitching up deep-faced horses to buggies. At some point a small car went past and it startled me with its noise, which seemed incongruous and alien all of a sudden. In one walled yard, a small boy played with a ball, staring at us bashfully as we strolled by, his fingers in his mouth. I wondered what it was like to be that child, living in this place.

At one point, I tried to dig to the dirt under all this turf, and couldn't. Greenery was too thick.

We strolled down to the beach near the dock, and read warning signs about the danger of interacting with the local dolphin, apparently something of a tourist attraction and known to enjoy the company of humans but behave unpredictably. I thought of the selkie legends, and wondered if they'd been spawned by seals who'd developed the same sort of habits.

There was a long finger of rock jutting out at the end of the beach, and I climbed around on it for a bit. A middle-aged man out taking samples offered to snap a photo of both the Artist and me, and got a couple before the camera died.

Which I would like a lot more if my face weren't swollen from all that crying the day before.

We headed over to a local bike rental shop just as a ferry of day tourists arrived at the harbor. The island was beginning to come to life. I listened as a customer in front of us was told that if the shop was closed by the time he brought the bike back, to just lean it against the wall for the night. The bike shop owner had a pair of piercingly blue eyes, the first of several islanders I noticed, randomly through the rest of that day, that shared them.

The castle fort at the top of the hill was our first intent and we wasted no time. Although the stone walls were labyrinthine, it turned out to be relatively easy to find pathways that meandered in the right direction.

I had to stop every few minutes for pictures, blessing the foresight of buying a smartphone before we left. The place was a photographer's dream; the land, stone, and architecture all harmonized in cool greens, blues and grays. Footpaths worn into the turf curved away beyond walls, full of potential. They might just lead to the next cottage or cowpen, of course, but...well, as the Artist pointed out, "it's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door."

You step outside...

....and if you don't keep your feet...

....there's no knowing where you'll end up.

Though I can think of much worse places.

Irresistible, beckoning...

The ground grew too steep to bike and we left them leaning against a wall at a curve in the road, continuing on foot up the hill. I ran my hand along the walls, fingertips tingling with their roughness. The stones were raw, uncut, stacked in a manner that nearly looked haphazard; shards like broken china, chips from a giant's axe lined up, crammed together and upon one another. The wind roared through the gaps between them, with a sound I normally associated with tree branches rustling. Tiny birds flitted in and out of the spaces, almost fearless of us.

The first tower we came to was blocked by a danger sign; predictably, the Artist wanted to trespass and I refused, though tempted. A bit further up the hill we realized the path turned back into a paved road, and went back for our bikes.

The forbidden tower.

Turning toward the north, we set out for the unknown. Once we left the village the green, grey-netted fields went on and on uninterrupted, with no cottage to break up the view. Within a few minutes we came over the highest point and found that our road was leading us straight for the sea; a line of darker grey behind the green land. A lighthouse stood sentry off to the west. The road ended in a swath of rocks a few dozen yards from the water. Grey rocks, in all shapes and sizes, spread underfoot, as numberless as stars, a gravel sidewalk enlarged to gigantic proportions. Nearby, whimsical towers of stacked stones bore silent testimony to previous visitors, though I preferred to think of them as the work of gnomes, and imagined a few Froudish faeries slinking furtively among the crags, watching us.

If you peek through that hole, you might see the Otherworld.

Bigger than it looks. I left a final stone on top as a contribution. 

The loose rocks clattered underfoot with a hollow sound as though they were full of air, foamy like lava rock. Beyond them, black rock shone against the water, broken up by fault lines so perfectly straight, it didn't seem possible that is was a natural phenomenon. The Artist lingered to examine them while I scurried to their outer edge, anxious to experience something I've longed for over many years.

If there's not some Irish legend about some giant wielding an axe, cutting up this rock...there should be.

I grew up going to beaches along the southern coasts of Florida and Alabama, particularly along the Gulf, known for its calm warm waters and sparkling white-quartz powdered sand beaches - and lovely they are, indeed. But as a devotee of classical romance literature and dramatic landscapes, I'd always wanted to visit a coastline that fit the descriptions that always seemed to come up in the stories I loved - those wild black rock coasts with their crashing waves, foam and froth and thunder, that seem tailor-made for storybook heroines to wander along in broody introspection, symbolizing and paralleling their inner passion and mystery.  And here it was, this powerful place, the embodiment of all those expectations.

Bucket list item: check.

The wind howled through my hair and threw the salt spray deliciously in my face. The thunder of surf vibrated through the stone and into my feet. I wanted to raise my arms, take off like a gull and soar. It was exactly what I knew it would be.

Only more, for the discovery of all the intimate details you only notice when you're there.

Like the fact that each depression in the rock is its own little micro-system of oysters, clams, and anemones, daily replenished by the spray.

Or that the stone is so rough and sharp from  several millennia of slow etching by salt that you can gouge yourself just by touching it, as I discovered when climbing out of this crevice. Those romantic heroines were definitely not strolling barefoot, turns out.

The Artist contemplates...

Moody water.

The earth breathes via the ocean...

We stayed an hour, which was not near long enough, but we were hungry by then and had more to see. Biking south revealed that the island was now alive with day tourists; we had to weave around several pedestrian groups and share the road with other bikers, mostly Italians. At the top of the castle hill we stopped to see the part we'd missed before; a single square-edged tower.

And its walls are watching you.

Closer inspection revealed that at least two walls sported a medieval Celt version of a gargoyle - just a simple face carved into a jutting rock, staring out to the sea on the south and east sides. Ducking through the low doorway we found the central inner space open to the sky, but on the east and west sides there were still chambers whose round stone roofs stood sturdy. You could enter them if you bent nearly double through their doorways, but they had no windows and were dark as pitch inside. It felt a little tomb like and I did not stay long.

Take note of that guy on the roof. He'll come into the story again.

Second story. That white flat space is actually the top of the chamber on the ground.

More view from the second floor level.

The northeast corner of the tower was crumbled into ruin, and there were people climbing the fallen stone, up the side of the wall. At its higher edge there was a succession of what might have been rough stone "steps" up to the higher level of the tower, and those brave enough to tackle these rail-less, wall-less stairs could then explore the ledge, now overgrown with turf, that ran around the inside of what must have been the second floor. I got as far as the steps when the Artist had an attack of vertigo and had to climb back down.

He begged me to join him on the ground and we had a brief but spirited argument about it. I maintained that there were kids climbing all the way to the top and that years of bouldering in Colorado had made this sort of thing child's play for me. He reminded me that we had three children. I told him he needed to stop reacting to fear and that his vertigo was not mine. He didn't want me up there if he couldn't come with me and I demanded to know what exactly that would accomplish. Hadn't I already had enough disappointments on this trip? He stood, silent and unhappy on the ground while I glared at the stone steps and fought myself. My one time, probably, on this island, ever, and I was being prevented from an adventure by someone else's fear. My conscience reminded me that sacrificing what I wanted for the sake of his peace was courage of another kind. But I'm afraid I was scowling in the picture he took of me halfway up the wall, and when I came back down I told him I could not talk to him for a while.

Stony. Both of us.

We biked down to the village and had lunch at a cafe. Soup and bread - I had soup at every lunch and dinner for two days and every time it was fantastic; I need a whole cookbook just on soup. Cauliflower and almond it was, that meal. Hot chocolate to drink. Comfort foods that eased my agitation and I was able to look the Artist in the face and forgive him.

Even though he also stole my cocoa.

Because I'm a pushover.

About that same time, he asked me sheepishly if I wanted to go back and climb the wall.

I had put it behind me by then, however, and after chatting with the folks at the next table, a couple from California, we headed out to the cemetery we'd seen from the castle hill.

It was also at the top of a smaller hill, a jungle of stone crosses and slabs growing out of tall, windswept grass.

In the middle of the hill a church had been dug out of the ground, stone walls rising out of the hollow. It was full of tourists so we avoided it, strolling around reading gravestones instead. Many were from the late 1800s. Many had surfaces so worn it was impossible to read dates, so likely even older. Some were as recent as a few years previous. I recalled reading in some of the local literature that it was thought this was an old pagan burial site commandeered by the church, and wondered vaguely if all those spirits rested well together.

It was peaceful and near-silent, though the drone of the ferries and the occasional plane going overhead reminded us that civilization still existed. The wind was milder, and we took off our jackets. I peeled off my boots and socks and stepped onto the cropped green turf, cool and spongy underfoot. At the far end of the cemetery we plunked ourselves down at the foot of a family plot just to breathe and enjoy the quiet. The Artist fell asleep, and I dug my toes into the ground and wondered how far back my Irish ancestry was, and whether there were anything to theories of spiritual connection to places, as though some bit of my DNA might recognize its own in the electromagnetic current of the earth.

The sun peeped through the clouds for a few minutes, and I laughed at a memory of an Irish-born comedian's relating of the typical response to that - "There's that big flaming ball again - what is that thing?"

It occurred to me that I had not yet seen a single bug. I examined the turf under my nose and tried to dig through the thick grasses, clover, and tiny wild flowers to the dirt beneath, and couldn't. The small plant life was so thick I literally could not find the bottom of it.
 
I trolled Facebook for a while and we got up around two o'clock to continue exploring, first going down to examine the sunken church, crouching into doorways that looked like they'd been built for hobbits.

Maybe this is where genuflecting before the altar really started.

Curiosity satisfied, we hopped on our bikes and headed east. That side of the island turned out to be rather bare and desolate; the stone fences still stood stalwart all the way to the edge, where they met the giant gravel beach again, but their green enclosures felt fragmented and segmented and lonely with no cottages or even sheds in sight to break the landscape. We went as far north as the trail allowed, and then turned west again.

The irony that I live in a place where you have to buy rocks if you want them in your landscape just hurts right now.

Really I just don't think there are enough rocks.

Passing a section of fence where a riotous tangle of wild flowers made rainbows among the green, I stopped to get a few pictures.

The Artist was far ahead, not noticing my pause; I knew he'd figure it out before too long, and left my bike lying in the road while I hunkered down in the grass. I was flat on my belly fiddling around with f-stops when I heard faint voices.

"What's this?"

"Here, you all right, love?"

Embarrassed, I scrambled up, apologizing for leaving my bike in the middle of the road. Two cyclists were approaching fast, and both burst into hearty laughter.

"Oh, Christ. I t'ought ye were dead!"

"T'at was loike somet'in' out of CSI Miami! The body lyin' in the road and the bike wheel still spinnin'"!

The bikers were men somewhere between my age and the Artist's, one dark-haired and broad, one grey and slight, both heartily enjoying themselves. Blushing, I assured them I was fine and showed them my photos. The Artist showed up at this point, riding back down the road to find me. One of my new friends pointed. "Is tat the fellow who left ye to die?" They regaled him with the story of grisly discovery and asked where we were from. We chatted a few minutes, and began to separate, when one of them turned around. "I just have to ask you one t'ing," he warned us, twinkle-eyed. "What do ye t'ink of Donald Trump?"

Agonized, despairing groans were the only appropriate response, and they howled, and doubled back to continue the conversation. Fifteen minutes later they noticed they were about to be late turning their bikes in. By that time we had discussed Trump, Irish politics, Brexit, and the weather in Florida. They introduced themselves as John and Padraig, which required a pronunciation lesson (essentially "Patrick" with all the hard consonants softened, per Gaelic pronunciation.) John had visited the island with his family every year since he was a child. Padraig hadn't been back in 22 years. They were old friends.

We biked with them almost back to town, trading commentary all the way. When the Artist and I stopped to explore another tiny stone church, they invited us to join them at the pub later that evening, which we happily accepted.

Biking all the way to the western end of the island was a matter of a few minutes; we took in the sight of the reservoir, an old shipwreck, and the cliffs of Moher in the distance. 

Fascinating textural algae at the reservoir.

Rocks, rocks, more rocks!

It was hilly on this end where the east had been flat, and we kept having to dismount to push the bikes up steep slopes. By the time we turned to go back to town, I was hot and starving.

We left the bikes at the rental office and trekked up the hill just as a ferry load of evening visitors arrived. One young man asked if we knew where "Ruairi's" (pronounced "Rory's") was and we told him we were headed there. A small hotel and pub, it was already crammed with people when we arrived, so we sat down in the quiet of the lobby to wait for our friends.

An older, dignified-looking gentleman entered presently and picked up an instrument case that was lying on one of the benches. Since there was supposed to be live music in the pub, the Artist asked him if he played in a band. He laughed, and said he played "everywhere". I heard a French lilt in his guttural "r"s and asked where he was from. "Brittany," he explained. "You know it?"

I knew where it was, but not much else. He began to talk, and required little motivation. He had traveled extensively through Europe and Africa, playing his mandolin or guitar. He spoke warmly of the nomadic people's of Arabic Africa and how they would gather round while he played and almost argue amongst themselves over the privilege of inviting him to their homes for the evening. We asked him why he loved Africa so much, and he shrugged, smiled wistfully, spread his hands overhead. "The sky."

He explained that he was a barrister and "quite rich", and that since he had retired and his children were all grown he had simply traveled where he wished, always with his instrument, because music opened many doors. His mandolin, he said, came from America, and was very old, but he had bought it in Europe and did not know its history. "I listen," he said, smiling, holding it up to his ear, "but she does not tell me."


We talked about the music in the various countries he spoke of, the differences in American and European "food culture". At that point I realized the pub was going to stop serving food in ten minutes and we'd better get inside. We thanked our new friend, never asked his name, and made it to a table and ordered before we realized John and Padraig were at another table nearby, with the rest of their families.

They moved a table over so we could sit with them, and so began a truly delightful dinner. The men told the story of our meeting again to their wives and sundry other family members. It got bigger every time they told it. We also realized that John had been one of the people climbing the castle wall up to the second level earlier in the day; he remembered hearing the Artist and I arguing over it, and shows up in the photo above. There was more talk on American politics (it helped that they think their own system is also a mess, so there was no superiority complex there). They were fascinated by my account of homeschooling (all the kids on the island go to boarding school once they finish primary grades). Only one of them had seen The Princess Bride, which shocked me, given their proximity to the famous "Cliffs of Insanity".

Their teenage boys left early to hang with their friends, and toward the end of the evening the rumor spread that the kids were having a bonfire down on the beach, headed up by a woman John described as "my crazy next-door neighbor."

We spent a few minutes enjoying the live music - our bardic friend having joined the two locals combining their instruments.

 I asked John what the Irish thought of the American resurgent interest in Irish music, and he said actually a lot of Irish don't particularly enjoy what he called "diddle-al-de-roll" music, as it all "begins to sound the same". He asked if we played anything and the Artist told them I could sing. I'd been humming "Isle of Inishfree" all day.

We all headed down to the beach bonfire, which turned out to be small. Too small, at any rate, to warm up the gaggle of tweens and teens in their bathing suits who were running, screaming, into the ocean. It was, I should point out, about 10 pm at this point, with a bright half-moon overhead, and a wind chill that made it feel about 45 degrees. The Artist and I were both huddled in coats.
John and Padraig were, as usual, roaring with laughter. "It's tat neighbor I told ye about," John explained. "She's after puttin' 'em up to this. Fockin' crazy." He turned to his other younger son. "If ye want some good craic, let's hide all their towels."

The air was full of the roaring ocean, the shrieks of kids, the mirth of adults. The crazy neighbor was in the water too; a large woman in a black swimsuit. She emerged like a magnificent sea creature, shedding water, and John introduced us. I can't remember her name. I was too overwhelmed. "It's the adrenaline!" she roared, exuberant. "You'll never be after feelin' so alive!" The kids wrapped themselves in towels and stood around the campfire roasting marshmallows. We were given a couple.
I think Padraig must have whispered something to the host, for she suddenly shouted from the midst of the chaos. "If ye won't go in the water ye have to give us a song as payment!"

"Tha's right!" A chorus of several more voices rose. "Ye have to sing!"

I hesitated, protesting that I rarely sang for audiences, but they were having none of that. And...well, if now was not the time, I did not know what was - and if I'd castigated the Artist for letting his fear prevent me from one adventure, I could hardly defend letting my own prevent me from another. Since Isle of Inishfree was still in my head, I poured it out. The crazy neighbor knew it, and sang along, which was helpful, because I couldn't remember every word. It was gratifying to hear them all shushing each other when I began, and when I finished they all clapped and cheered.

It was so late by then. We hated to leave, but we had to get up early to catch the ferry the next morning. John and Padraig walked with us up the hill and back to the village, John telling stories about how they used to sneak up to the castle at night and explore in the dark, especially the one that was off-limits.

At the pub doorway we bid them farewell, with warm hearts and a little sadness at the thought we'd never see them again. I took a picture of all of them - "T'at's not goin' on Facebook, is it?" - and the Artist and I went on our way.

We got a little lost on the way back, winding through the pathways between the walls. Our house was on the furthest outskirts of the village on the west side, and although we knew the general direction, darkness changed the landscape and made distances hard to discern. The silence was complete behind the constant breath of the wind; the shadows where the fences cut through the moonlight were like black velvet.

I thought, with a delicious shiver, how easy it would be for one's imagination to conjure up any manner of unearthly thing in that dark loneliness. Every old folk legend of people being spirited away by goblins in such places on such nights came dancing impishly through my mind. No Halloween haunted house could come close to that awesomely eerie walk back to our lodging. I kept thinking of how this place would have looked a half-century before, with no electricity to burn the few dozen street and house lights that were our only source of direction. A traveler in those days might well just find a spot out of the wind and wait until morning rather than continue to wander aimlessly in the darkness, a sure descent into madness.

We did finally make it back, and I had to spend a miserable hour on the phone following up on our luggage situation, learning from Gemil that despite several planes to our area that day, none had carried our luggage, which was still in Toronto. And now even he was directing me to track it via AerLingus, though he did give me another few phone numbers to try. In desperation, I called the AirCanda lines again. It wasn't just the loss of our travel clothes and toiletries that upset me. One of my trip goals was to fulfill a personal dream - to shoot some on-location fantasy photography costumed as my favorite character from the Prydain cycle (see Part One footnote) - and my costume gown and accessories were all in that luggage. Clothing can be replaced. This opportunity, however, was unlikely to come again. At 38, I was already pushing well past the age for believably costuming as a girl in her teens. The Artist, knowing and sympathizing with my passions, was fully supportive of this aspect of the trip, selfish of me as it may have been, and he was just as frustrated over the missed opportunity. He would have been happy to make the phone calls I was making, but I had, uncharacteristically, stepped into the lead role, and he sat back and watched me pursue necessary confrontation with a good deal of pride. My self-confidence was growing daily under the challenge. You wanted to play Eilonwy, I thought, more than once, so own it. Live the role. She wouldn't put up with this, so don't you do it either. I did actually yell at a few people on the phone, and saved my angry tears until I'd hung up.

The lack of luggage closure kept me awake most of the night. But in the grand scheme of memory, it is that day that stands as monument; the bike ride through a magical landscape, the wind and the rocks and the ocean, the laughter and warmth of companionship and the universal language of music.

Thank you, Inisheer, you magical place. Taking a piece of you home with me.

(I did, too. A rock, for my collection.)