At the Edge of Ireland Page 29

  “Fascinating,” I said. “And the moral is?”

  “Moral? I’m not too sure about that. Maybe—make the most of whatever you’ve got—I suppose.”

  “Just like Noel with his beautiful little farm, all those velvety meadows, all those cute sheep, and a stack of money in the bank from all those bottles of whiskey he never drank.”

  “I’ll drink to all that!” Noel said, laughing, his warm eyes glowing in the brilliant sunset that was bathing the room in a golden-scarlet light.

  “Oh no, you can’t do that!” Anne said, chuckling. And the evening rolled on…

  24

  A Scrap Odyssey

  ANOTHER CONVERSATION A FEW DAYS LATER reinforced a lot of what we’d learned from the “protean life” seemingly lived by many of the more creative individuals on Beara. I was chatting with Pete O’Neill, a burly red-haired fisherman in his early fifties who lived down in Kinsale but seemed to enjoy occasional sojourns up to Castletownbere. We’d met originally by chance at Breen’s in the square and agreed to keep in touch. On this particular occasion we were sitting down by the ferry slip on a warm afternoon, and he was describing the appeal of our little town and his memories of one notable event back in the late 1990s.

  “Y’see, this place always seems to lure in the mavericks and the magic individuals—with the occasional madman thrown in to keep the pot bubbling. In fact there was this one guy—back in ’98, I think, maybe ’99. He seemed to be a bit of all of that—maverick, magic, and definitely a touch mad too. I think his real name was Pearl-man—David, Dennis—I forget. But he’d decided to call himself Neutrino—Poppa, Poppa Neutrino, that was it—after the name of a small particle so elusive and mysterious that he assumed it was unreal—a theoretical entity.”

  “And how did you meet this Neutrino fellow?” I asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t. I’ve been told about him. I wish I had met him, though. He became a bit of instant Beara folklore when he arrived here out of the blue—actually, out of the black, just after a tremendous storm had hit the town here. Floated in on a clapped-out piece of junk he’d somehow hobbled together with a few of his mates out of scrap lumber and Styrofoam and suchlike and sailed with this crazy crew—three guys and three dogs, I think—across the Atlantic from Canada to Ireland.”

  “Did the locals take him seriously?”

  “Not at first. I mean, you wouldn’t believe what a piece of crap that boat of his was—if you’d even call it a boat. More like a mini-masterpiece of discarded dreck! Some didn’t believe he’d made the crossing at all, but after a while, as people talked with him, he became a bit of a zany saint-guru. He seemed to be all kinds of different people bundled up in one little individual. They said he was a singer, songwriter, violinist, poet, builder, craftsman, a lettering artist—I heard he painted quite a few signs for people around here.

  “The guy was in his seventies, but he acted like he was in his early forties. Energy just radiated out of him, so they said. He seemed to be one of those people who refused to outgrow their vicarious vicissitudes. People’d come just to listen to tales of his adventures around the earth, especially his zany sailing odysseys on other crafts he’d patched together from scraps of this and that. I think he even tried to replicate Thor Heyerdahl’s journey on his amazing trans-Pacific Kon-Tiki raft built out of balsa logs. They couldn’t get enough of this chap around here. They even started quoting him—things like: ‘The forbidden and the impossible are always the greatest aphrodisiacs.’ And another—‘Life is fire—you’re meant to get burned. You can’t escape it. The faster you learn to enjoy the smell of burning, the faster you learn what life is all about—an endless adventure!’ I always remember that last bit—‘an endless adventure.’ Kinda makes you wonder about your own life—the way you’ve chosen to use your time.

  “And that’s another thing he kept saying too—about the choice always being yours. No matter what the circumstances—no matter how many justifications you have for living a straight-line kind of life—stifling the options—it’s still you doing the choosing. ‘Course he said there were penalties to be paid: ‘He who dares not grasp the thorn should ne’er crave the rose’—bit of Emily Brontë so he said. You can blame God, fate, bad luck, obligations, responsibilities—all the usual stuff—but the choices are always there and only you can choose them, release them, sailing on the whims of the winds—and release yourself, I suppose.”

  “Or your selves,” I suggested.

  “Yeah,” Pete said and thought for a while. “Yeah—well, I think that’s what this Neutrino chap was trying to get across. Some people got mad at him, usually behind his back, though, and called him irresponsible, a wandering bum, an escapist unwilling to live in the real world with real responsibilities. Others went the other way—they seemed absolutely fascinated by his ideas—and more important, the fact he’d lived out his ideas. Lived out his fantasies and dreams. Made them really real. He gave people a kind of release—at least that’s what some of my friends who were around at the time tell me. He seemed to be living proof that zany things are possible—that life could be lived as a great adventure. He said something like, “The true adventurer goes out aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fates!”

  “Well, sounds like this Neutrino chap gave Castletownbere quite a bit of a buzz.”

  Poppa’s Boots

  “Yep. They said the quay was crammed with people as this piece of floating junk bobbed into harbor. It was all in the papers. Neu-Poppa’s Boots trino shouted out, so they say—‘Sixty-two days from Newfoundland to wherever it is we’ve landed in Ireland—we’ve definitely broken the scrap barrier!’

  “And scrap just about describes his floating creation. The major components were ‘distressed’ lumber nailed and then woven together with miles of frayed rope from local boatyards back in Canada, huge Styrofoam floats, an old parachute pulled over a web of ancient fishnets for a sail, broad outriggers of bamboo to stop the contraption from flipping over, and a huge piece of construction plywood as a daggerboard. And additional luxuries apparently included a full-size upright piano, an old radar that nobody knew how to work, an ancient oak bar for nightly ‘sundowner’ drinks, and—oh those three pet dogs…said it was all inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s crazy concepts and constructions.

  “He must have had God on his side—they were hit by two hurricanes, tipped over, blown three hundred miles off course, kept running out of food and having to beg from rare passing boats. They’d planned to piggyback on the Gulf Stream current all the way to Europe but never seemed able to find it! But they somehow finally arrived in Castletownbere, were celebrated mightily by the locals, and eventually had a video of their exploits shown on the National Geographic channel later on the same year. And when they interviewed him on the local TV and radio, he kept coming out with more pretty neat ideas—things that kinda stuck in your mind…’”

  “Like?”

  “Well, like…like what I was saying earlier on, really, and well, it’s been a while…so I can’t remember it all…but I know he kept saying you’ve got to ‘break the alignment’…meaning, don’t be too predictable. He said, ‘When you die, the alignment’s broken anyway, so have more fun and do it yourself from time to time. Step out of one life existence and slip into another. Let your possessions go—all those material distractions—give ’em away…Be a gypsy…Let go and trust and let the current carry you…Go a little crazy…You don’t have as long as you think…’”

  “So you do remember!”

  “Well—maybe not his exact words, but that was the gist of it. He spoke what many of us secretly think or fantasize about—but most times we never do anything about it. Never get beyond the ‘what if’ stage.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “I’m not sure, really. I heard he’d gone back to the States to build another raft to cross the Pacific to Japan or…or maybe it was Thailand. He’d always have some wacky scheme going. For him, I reckon, it would just be foll
owing his life-code. Doing what he felt he should be doing. But I tell you, he left a lot of people around here wondering about their own lives and the way they were living them…He created ripples of restlessness, you might call it…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, is it?”

  “Y’know,” I said, “we’ve had quite a few friends visit us down here from England and the USA and they told us that Beara itself—this beautiful peninsula—has had a similar impact. Creating those ‘ripples of restlessness’ as you see other ways of living—other ways of celebrating life and being alive.”

  “Yeah. And it doesn’t just happen to the blow-ins. I think many of us who’ve lived here for years—sometimes all of our lives and the lives of our forefathers—feel we can tap into these…ripples. Kinda keeps us on the right course…gives you a kind of whack on the side of your head once in a while. And that can be a very useful reminder of the important things…right?”

  “Dead right,” I said.

  25

  Walking the Beara Way

  (or Not…)

  WARNING: THIS IS NOT A PROJECT to be undertaken lightly. Oh sure, it looks easy enough on a small map—a simple dotted line wriggling up and around the Beara’s mountainous spine and encompassing its two islands, Dursey and Bere, and ending up among a very pleasant cluster of restaurants in elegant Kenmare.

  Even the official guidebook is disarmingly encouraging in its summary description: “Using tracks, old roads and mountain paths, it takes in some of the most breathtaking scenery in Ireland…One could walk sections by following the easily recognized marking posts or a map. It provides a delightful and easy way to discover and explore the peninsula.”

  The actual length is a little disheartening, though—125 miles is a lot longer than it looks on the map—but having once in my more ambitiously exploratory days conquered England’s Coast to Coast Walk (75 miles) and the mighty Pennine Way (at 270 miles, the longest of all the nation’s “long-distance” footpaths), I convinced myself that the Beara Way must be something of a dilettantish dawdle. Particularly as almost half of it is along narrow paved boreens and not across (so I was assured) thigh-deep bogs and snap-your-ankle rock deserts, as it was on the wild and soggy moors of England.

  I thought I might do it in sections, and indeed my preparatory strolls on the two islands were both enticing experiences. At the tip western end of the peninsula is the enchanting, almost abandoned isle of Dursey. Barely four miles by one and a half miles, it is described by Penelope Durell in her richly informative book, Discover Dursey, as a “long leviathan at rest, gazing out at the boundless ocean—up-tilted nose, smooth domed head, back formed by the curvaceous contours of five hills.”

  The island may appear at first somewhat docile and even dull. But closer inspection reveals dramatic tide races in the narrow channel separating it from the mainland, rugged beachless cliffs rejecting easy access, and the stump of a lighthouse built in 1866 on Calf Rock and battered to pieces by a hurricane in 1881. This is indeed not a friendly place, as its history of hardship and horror would indicate, most notably in a massacre of all its three hundred inhabitants—supposedly members of the O’Sullivan clan—following the destruction of Dunboy Castle at Castletownbere in 1602.

  The description of this event is spine-chilling in its ferocity:

  Many of the people on Dursey Island at the time were refugees from the mainland, and they had fled in terror on the arrival of the forces. These were English forces under the command of Sir George Carew who was sent over to challenge local chiefs and even the forces of King Philip III of Spain who had sent supplies and men to aid the struggle for sovereignty against Queen Elizabeth I in 1601. Following a disastrous rout for the Irish, Dunboy Castle became an important but fragile garrison against the imminent attack. When disaster seemed apparent, many of the occupants fled to Dursey Island. Some had entered the small fort there, others ran away to hide or placed their hope in the sanctuary of the church. It was all to no avail, for after dismantling the fort, the soldiers set fire to all the houses as well as the church. They rounded up the people and shot down, hacked with swords or ran through with spears the now disarmed garrison and others—old men, women and children—whom they had driven into one heap. Some ran their swords up to the hilt through the babes and the mothers, who were carrying them on their breasts, others paraded before their comrades little children writhing and convulsing on their spears, and finally binding all the survivors, they threw them off the cliffs into the sea over jagged and sharp rocks showering on them shots and stones. In this way perished about 300 Catholics.

  It’s hard to juxtapose such hideously cruel events with the mellow moods presented to visitors today who take the time to explore Dursey. The Beara Way here on the island is a ten-mile loop on paths and boreens and is particularly pleasant in early fall when the gorse is in radiant golden flower across the bare treeless dome of the island. The climax experience, though, is not so much the walk itself, but access to the island by a creaking, rickety old cable car that crosses the tide-race abyss at the eastern extremity of the peninsula. The tiny metal cabin with a capacity of “six persons or a cow” seems alarmingly fragile and subject to a nauseating swinging and swaying as winds buffet it eighty feet or so above the roiling waves below. Occasionally dolphins doing flips and leaps in the turbulent channel can distract from the traumatic experience, but if windy heights are a worry, just stare straight ahead and promise yourself a tipple of the hard stuff when you finally arrive on the other side.

  So why come? Well, certainly for the peace and silence, as only a handful of hardy residents call this place home. Also the evocative remnants of a monastery, fort, signal tower, and villages in addition to fine vistas of Bull Rock, Ireland’s second largest gannetry, plus a breeding ground of storm petrels, fulmars, razorbills, guillemots, choughs, and even occasional peregrine falcons. But for those relishing the rich mysteries of Beara, Dursey’s tales of strange boats, mystical lights, sea and animal apparitions, ghosts, and fairies are a far more tempting lure.

  Anne and I visited Penny Durell to learn more about some of these oddities.

  “So—how long have y’got?” was Penny’s laughing response after we told her of our mission to learn from her more of Dursey’s strange folkloric heritage.

  “Well—we have your book, so we’ve got a bit of a head start,” said Anne.

  Penny smiled. Or rather, she glowed. She was one of those intriguing individuals who seemed to float about buoyed on their own auras of happiness and contentment. Despite a recent and obviously still painful injury to her right hand, her smile exuded radiance and humor.

  “Oh, well—if you’ve already forked out for the book, you’re very welcome indeed. Cup o’tea? Homemade biscuits?” (This had obviously now become one of our “Beara rituals.” A substantial part of our diet seemed to consist of cups of tea and homemade confectionaries in other people’s homes.)

  “Yes to both,” I said. “We need restoration. It took quite a while to find your place. You’re way out in the middle of nowhere…”

  Penny giggled. “Well, I don’t know about nowhere. It’s certainly a bit isolated but…”

  “And almost lost in your own massive windbreak trees and bushes.”

  “Yes, and that. But, be honest now, isn’t it worth it just for the view!”

  She was right, of course. The all-embracing vista of the whole of Dursey Island, the foaming tidal rips of the narrow sound and the faint hazy outlines of the two now familiar Skelligs twelve or so miles out there in the Atlantic, was magnificent.

  “I’d never get tired of that view,” Anne said, sighing.

  Penny laughed, “No, you’re right. It’s very beautiful…when you can see it! But you know how our weather is here. We can go days—even weeks in winter—when you can barely see the trees at the end of our garden.”

  “Yeah—we’ve had quite a few experiences with those local mists—more like the old London pea-soupers. But I was looking at your garden. Lot
s of stuff you’re growing out there…”

  “Well, I guess David, my loyal mate, and I are still maintaining some of the old counterculture spirit—y’know, self-sufficiency and all that. We grow a mass of tomatoes and other veggies, gorgeous apples and soft fruits and herbs galore. But when we first moved here some people thought we were a bit suspicious with all our herby stuff. Thought it might be something a little more…y’know, radical—but we invited them in to help themselves, and they eventually accepted us as harmless old ex-hippies still living the simple ‘good life.’”

  Penny’s “tea” was one of her own herbal brews and full of fruit flavors. Her homemade cookies were the kind that you find your fingers reaching out for despite edicts issued by the responsible part of your brain insisting that your quota has already been outrageously exceeded.

  And Penny’s stories were wonderful. We could fill chapters galore with her tales, but as her book Discover Dursey already does that, why be redundant. Suffice to say, we delighted in her historic vignettes and descriptions of pre-Christian superstitions or piseogs. Apparently the old feast of Bealtaine on the first day of May celebrating the coming of summer was the climactic event of the year here and spawned a wealth of customs, many revolving around cows, milk, and butter making. The animals were blessed by marking the sign of the cross over the byre doors, which would then also be tightly locked up in the morning to prevent mischievous fairies (as opposed to the “good little people”) from stealing precious milk and butter. May Day itself was particularly rigid—no butter could be churned on that day, no milk could be given away, as such a gift would drain “the luck of the farm.” And woe betide any cow giving birth to a calf, as they were both certain to die and bring doom upon the household.