Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring – A.B.C Part 2

Fairy Castle

Huh?

I squinted and concentrated on the backlit tablet screen. I’d skimmed my daughter Ellen’s latest Ireland emails before morning yoga on May 26, but because our old friends Eric and Kay came to celebrate Spence’s birthday, I’d waited until bedtime to absorb Ellen’s messages. Kicking my legs under the covers of the loft bed, I focused on her latest set. The first message and photo made sense.

           A.B.C.―Another Bloody Castle―in this case 

          Dunguaire Castle.

The second photo puzzled me.

          Leprechauns. We stopped by a fairy castle too. Still in 

          County Clare, near Galway. A donkey grazed across 

          the road.

  

The structure shouted castle. What made it a fairy castle? I studied the rock walls.

Ten rows of rectangular rocks formed a single room. Duh! And the grass growing beside it indicated the rocks weren’t Egyptian pyramid size. If Ellen’s husband Chris had stood beside the castle, the photo wouldn’t have tricked my sleep-bleary eyes.

Forcing my eyes to stay open, I scrolled down.

           Baby Cliffs. Before the Cliffs of Moher, we went to the 

          "baby cliffs" for a pre-show.

She’d attached two photos. Gray rocks shared the screen with a navy blue sea in the first photo. In the other, a boulder, shaped like a weathered baby bootee, perched toe-toward-the-sea on a grass and rock slope.

           Cliffs of Moher. Just ... beautiful!

This time she’d attached three photos which made me scooch back in bed. The drop to the water (at the highest seven hundred two feet according to Wikipedia) would give people plenty of time to regret getting close to the edge.

I tucked the tablet under my pillow and dreamed of paddling a kayak below the Cliffs of Moher. At 2:47 a.m., the bathroom door clicked closed, someone’s snores floated up the spiral stairs, and the tablet pinged six times for six incoming emails.

Sheesh! My armchair travel following Ellen and Chris around Ireland abandoned its donkey cart pace and zoomed like a launching rocket. Could I keep up?

Not wanting to open my eyes, I rolled over. Later. I’d catch up later.

But the next day, I spent all of my solitary time polishing the story about neighbor Mary Ann [See “Walks Through My Heart” May 27, 2018] before six Pittsburgh Wellses and our son Charlie joined Eric, Kay, Spence and me for a Sunday-before-Memorial-Day Wells Wood celebration.

• Walk to gaze at iris, check the beaver dam, and see what three-year-old great niece Addy could see along the dusty dirt road.
• Chat about work, retirement, and absent relatives’ adventures.
• Watch one-year-old Amelia walk and shove stuffed penguins into her mouth.
• Listen to Addy roll the tattered baseball she’d found on the dirt road. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-bonk―up and down the deck ramp.

By the time I washed dishes, found containers for all the leftovers, and collected Amelia’s hot dog bun crumbs for the worm composting factory, I didn’t have the energy to stare at the tablet screen.

I set the tablet on the bedside table. I could catch up with Ellen, Chris, and scenic Southwest Ireland in the morning.

Chris and Ellen at Giant's Causeway

Before my morning dash to the bathroom, I opened Ellen’s latest email and read she’d already left for Northern Ireland.

                 In Belfast, we went on a black cab political tour which 

          was fairly interesting. Here are some signs a in 

          Protestant neighborhood.

She attached photos of murals including “Women’s Voices Matter . . . Equality for all.”

                The tour continued with a visit to the "Peace Wall" 

          which has gates that still close at night. The locals 

          referred to it as a wall of segregation and said more 

          needs done to promote understanding―integrating 

          schools (now Protestant/Catholic specific) and making

          good on the promise to bring down the peace wall.

Hadn’t peace come to Northern Ireland in 1998? I set the tablet down and picked up Fodor’s Essential Ireland, the same edition Ellen had packed for her trip. On page 543 Fodor explained “The Troubles” and on page 544 stated that though the situation today “. . . may not be perfect, it is infinitely better than the dark days of the Troubles.” Like the Civil War still affecting relationships in the U.S.? What effect will Brexit have on Northern Ireland?

I didn’t ponder answers to either question―time for that bathroom dash.

Okay, my armchair travel had morphed into lie-in-bed travel. Later, after Ellen returned home, I’d sit in the Adirondack chair, download her emails, save her photos, and revel in rereading her messages. But while she traveled? I managed the zooming rocket pace horizontally.

           I am writing to you from the airport. We’re about to 

           come back to the US! On the last day we had several 

           adventures. They are filming Game of Thrones in 

           Northern Ireland so many sites where they filmed are 

           now big attractions. First stop was the Black Hedge,  

           which is really birch trees.

A tree canopy, like the one we have over West Creek Road, topped her Black Hedge photo. The twisty Irish birch branches invoked a mystical fairy-tale feeling which our straighter Pennsylvania branches don’t. Three hours after she’d sent her email, I typed a response.

          Thank you, Ellen! Writing to you from bed. It's

          great waking up and finding your emails cued

          in my inbox. Love the birch walk.

  

The relaxing nature suited my horizontal travel and brain better than the political tensions in Belfast.

           We hiked 1 km to and from the Carrick Rope Bridge.

           We didn’t have tickets to go on the bridge, but the 

           views were spectacular.

Sheesh! I flipped to page 581 in Fodor’s guide―Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge is sixty feet long and hangs a hundred feet over the sea. No way would I cross that flimsy, vertigo-inducing structure! Maybe Belfast politics had its place on a vacation. I answered,

           So green. So blue. So rugged. Love the Irish

           landscapes. And I’d buy tickets NOT to walk on

           the rope bridge. Its swaying would be too 

           scary.

To change the topic, I opened Ellen’s next email.

           Giant’s Causeway. Look up the story for this one. It’s 

           amusing. Geographically, this was due to large 

           volcanic eruptions under a glacier.

I flipped to page 585 in Fodor’s for a full page photo of the causeway made of mashed-together hexagonal columns. “As all Ulster folks know,” the giant Finn McCool built the stepping stones to reach a giantess on the Isle of Staffa. When McCool reached the island, her boyfriend started a fight. In the fight, Finn picked up a part of the causeway and threw it at his rival. Fairy-tale indeed.

Shifting the pillow under my head, I opened the last email in the cue.

           Final photo of a castle, Dunluce Castle. Part of the 

          castle literally fell into the North Sea. Also a Game of

          Thrones filming location. Back in the U.S. soon!

Gratitude warmed every cell in my body. Ellen’s nineteen texts, twenty-eight emails, and forty-eight photos gave me a treasured tour of Ireland, a trip much more than just A.B.C.―Another Bloody Castle―in this case Dunluce Castle.

Dunluce Castle