Learning the Language at Loughcrew

Our last day in Ireland was spent at Loughcrew: A wild and remote series of cairns that feature some of the most complicated and beautiful glyphs in all of Ireland. The cairns are situated at the top of a steep hill and our climb wasn’t made any easier by the raw and biting wind.. We thought the combination of remoteness plus the weather might keep other visitors away, but we pulled into the parking area just ahead of a tour bus. It proved not to matter. The other visitors headed straight for the central cairn, so I decided to hang back and explore the smaller cairns first. The remote location, lack of crowds and cold, misty, windy weather all lent an atmosphere to the experience that felt authentic and connected.I took my time, stopping now and then to touch specific stones. When I finally arrived at the central cairn, the last of the visitors were about to go inside along with a man I assumed was their guide. He asked Jim and I if we wanted to come inside also and it was then that we realised that his job was to stay at the site and guide any visitors who were interested through the main cairn. The inside of the cairn was astonishing: even the corridor passageway was absolutely littered with the most exquisite glyphs and I felt genuine excitement to be in their presence. I am fascinated by the carvings and can’t help but wonder about who made them and why: That they have sacred significance seems a given; just what that significance is, what messages they’re meant to relate and how it all relates to the culture (and people) who made them is the mystery.
Our (very knowledgeable) guide showed us how on the morning of the equinox, the rising sun first illuminates a sun-like glyph on the upper-left corner of the central stone, before continuing down to the right, illuminating a series of three other sun-like glyphs before retreating from the passage and leaving it again in total darkness. As our other guides had done, he speculated on what this cairn might have been used for. It struck me that all of the cairns we’d visited – especially this one - seemed more related to life than to death. It struck me that the discovery of fragments of ancestor bone inside did not necessarily mean that the cairns were meant to function as burial grounds. In fact, as I experienced the cairn, the idea that they were simply burial chambers made less and less sense. I asked our guide if perhaps the bone fragments might simply be a way to include the ancestors in any significant events. He brightened then, smiled and said that he’d always thought it unfortunate that the sites were labelled burial mounds by early archæologists because the label has since inhibited attempts to view them as anything else: He said he felt it was rather like discovering the ruins of an old church and graveyard and assuming – because of the presence of human remains – that the main (or only) purpose of the entire site was somehow related to death. I have to say that of all the places we’d visited, Loughcrew was my favourite. It resonates with a kind of hum and I felt deeply connected to the stones and as if the order of our experiences and the knowledge and understanding we’d gained along the way had been wonderfully cumulative. I know that each piece – the placement, siting and marking of the cairns and stones – relates to a larger whole in some significant way and felt inspired by the fact that I was only just beginning to understand their meaning and potential. The stones speak...now it’s up to me to learn the language.

Singing for the ancestors

After Jim’s first Irish breakfast (mine too, but not substantially different from and English breakfast), I presented him with his pilgrimage present – a magnetic sign I’d had made for the car door that read: In Search of George Tanner. Jim & Sandy’s Irish Ancestry Tour 2008”. I thought he might have thought it tacky, but he was chuffed!

We headed off towards the town of Roscommon to get a bead on the local area. According to the Griffiths Valuations of 1848, the Roscommon/Longford area is one of the two most likely locations in Ireland (the other is county Tyrone) that our ancestrors might have come from. Along the way, we found everything charming (especially Jim who even liked the blue metal storage sheds by the side of a barn) and were particularly drawn to old, ruined farmhouse/barn structures, wondering if they are in any way similar - or (against all reason) perhaps the very structures our ancestors may have inhabited.

Along the way, Jim spotted a sign for St. Patrick’s Well (just outside Athleague) and said, “Let’s go THERE!” so we turned up the road (in what was to be the first of many unplanned adventures) and drove a few miles - all the way to the end of the road – where another sign for St Patrick’s well pointed us back the way we’d come. We turned around and again came to the other end before spotting anything. Neither of us was in a hurry to get anywhere particular and we both wanted to find the well, so we turned and headed up the road again and I was just about to suggest that we park the car and walk up and down the road, when Jim said, “There it is”. Sure enough, and not really all that difficult to spot, was a beautiful clearing with 2 huge (and I’d guess ancient) Yew trees. The first part of the clearing was well maintained and contained a small well presided over by a statue of St Patrick as well as a number of other shrines - a small one to the virgin, another featuring Jesus on the cross, another one a sort of plastic encased image (of something now indecipherable) hanging from a tree.

Beyond them all was (for me and most certainly it would seem, for Jim) was the place of real magic: an ancient well under a giant and spreading yew tree. Covered in moss and surrounded by a tangle of overgrowth, it was a quiet and deep place that caught Jim’s attention immediately. He said later that it had almost felt as if he was being drawn there.

He sat by the well for several minutes and then asked me if we had any food we could use for an offering. I got a bag of mixed seeds, dried berries and nuts from the car and Jim offered prayers to the five directions and to the ancestors for their guidance and help.He then sang a traditional song about the Irish experience of the famine - of being impoverished and driven from their homeland by starvation and desperation. Given that our ancestors left Ireland sometime during the 1840’s (the height of the famine), Jim’s song very well could define their very experience and by the end of it, I was in tears: feeling very connected to the place and what happened to the people there. He finished his impromtu ceremony with a Lakota song – which brought on even more tears.

When he finished, Jim saw I was crying and walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. I had no words.

We’re not lost, we’re in Ireland!

It was hard to make the transition form Norway to Ireland: I was excited to head off with Jim on our Irish adventure, but I wasn’t yet ready to leave Norway. My plan, to get to Ireland the evening before Jim arrived (early early the next day) was a good one and I’d planned to use the brief time in Dublin to catch upon blogs, email and maybe even some laundry – so I’d booked myself a regular – and anonymous – airport hotel: my only criteria was that they provided an airport shuttle service and free internet. I got what I paid for, but after Norway it felt alien and bleak. I wolfed down a room service hamburger, washed out some socks, wrote a blog, then went to bed feeling a bit down.

Next morning, though things looked much brighter. I went straight back to the airport to meet Jim and arrived there just as he was coming out of customs. He was looking around for me – with a bit of a furrowed brow, so I jumped up and down, waving my arms and as soon as he caught sight of me, he broke into an ear-to-ear grin. Didn't matter to either of us that it had been raining cats and dogs and a good chunk of Dublin was underwater...
We gathered up our rental car and headed off towards Tullamore. We poked around the town a bit – but nothing seemed to be happening yet so we headed off to Lough Boora Park in search of the Patrick Dougherty sculpture recently installed there.

Now, before I go on...a little back story. Patrick Dougherty is a sculptor and his work has been a favourite of mine since I discovered it – maybe 5 years ago or so - and I’ve kept somewhat current on his work via his website (see favourite web links at the right). His work has always had a sense of the sacred for me – mostly in that I feel that I can sense the kind of meditative state required to create the work and can't help but imgine where that takes the artist. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but his work has a kind of stately quiet to it (even though it’s constructed of a riot of sticks) and also a kind of reverence. All of this – his process, his forms...and the effect his works have on me when I see them, had lead me to think that he might be one of the artists I would ask to interview in relationship to my research: I wanted to know if the act of doing the work brought him any closer to his sense of the sacred.

Anyway, about a month before I left on this journey, I was checking in on his website and made a startling discovery: He had just installed a work at Lough Boora Parklands – not 10 miles from my first stop in Athlone, Ireland. I also noticed that the month I’m in Boston (Sept), he’ll be doing an installation just south of Boston and the month I’m in Fort Collins, Colorado (Oct), he’ll be doing an installation in Colorado Springs! This seemed like a nudge...or at least an opportunity not to be missed (actually more like a bit of a jolt) and I emailed him a bit about my work and asked if he’d consider participating in my research. He wrote back – a very friendly email, encouraging me to visit Lough Boora, requesting my feedback and inviting me to contact him when we are both in Boston. I’d also told Jim about his work, sent him the website link and created a new convert – so he was enthusiastic about seeing the work too.

We found Lough Boora easily enough – which is pretty amazing seeing as we were dead-reckoning and turning – predominantly – on intuitive leaps. We were only just beginning to realise that signposts and mile markers as we know them don’t really exist – especially in this part of Ireland.

The park is quite strangely beautiful – peat bogs and wetlands have been set aside and a fairly recent addition has been a number of environmental artworks. We headed off on the artwork trail and encountered a number – maybe 7 or 8 – before reaching Patrick Dougherty’s piece. Some seemed to me to embrace what I would consider essential in a successful environmental work of art: that is that defines some clear relationship with and that it works some magic on the environment it’s in. A couple stand out in this regard: in particular, a pice consisting of seven mirrors place in the ground, reflecting the sky like water.

Another was a triangular shaped enclosure, with a defined a threshhold you pass through to a sacred space within. But, I have to admit, I gave neither of these pieces the attention they probably deserved, because I was so driven to find Patrick’s piece. To finally see one in the real.
Finally, we caught sight of it (Jim first, actually). Nestled in small stand of trees was what I can only describe as a organic longhouse-nest for humans. Woven entirely of saplings, sticks and branches, the work forms an intricate, irregular and meandering tunnel through the trees. It seems to draw you deeper into itself and every now and then, the weaving defines a kind of doorway or window that directs your travel or your gaze outward again. The work seems to reflect the relationship between nature/environmnt and quiet human industry – it is similar in feel to an intricate labyrinth of ant tunnels or an elaborate nest. I’m not sure my words can do the experience of this work justice: It was (is) absolutely enchanting, somehow comforting and grounding, yet magical and very moving.

At one point, quite moved by the work and my experience of it (which in relationship to things referred to as art is fairly rare for me) I said out loud, “This work makes me feel proud to be an artist”. Thank you Patrick Dougherty for your stunning sensibilities and vision. I can’t wait to meet you.

It was hard to leave the work behind, but we went on to find our first night’s accomodation, becoming almost immediately and somewhat hopelessly lost. We found ourselves on a single track road with an approaching herd of cattle. We pulled over as far as we could and the lead farm boy said, “Pull in your mirror!” Good thing, too or we would have lost it as the cattle rumbled by bumping the car and shaking us all around. Jim said, “Now I know I’m in Ireland!”A few miles on, totally lost but not particularly concerned, we pulled over to ask a local man directions to our B&B. He asked if we were lost and I said, We’re not lost, we’re in Ireland!”. He laughed his approval then gave us the list of lefts and rights at the crossroads, by the church, after the shop and over the hill that saw us all the way to our beds and clued us in on our next few days of navigating around Counties Roscommon and Sligo: roadsigns are few and far to come by, directions are complex and what you end up finding have that ‘we were meant to find this feel’. Pulling up to Ballycreggan House was a relief and a wonderful surprise: The restored manor house is likely to be our flashest accomodation in Ireland, but it felt wonderfully welcoming. We decided to celebrate our real arrival in Ireland with a glass of wine out on the long front lawn....that is, until the heavens opened and we had to run inside out of the rain.