On Ireland

Viewing a few photos of Ireland, my mind is taken back there. The smells, the green, the serenity, the sounds of clear, cold water trickling over gentle falls. The antiquity, the friendly people, the aged monasteries covered with ivy and lichen, the crumbling rock shaped by thousands or millions of years, the sound of music and singing everywhere. How clean everything looks, with many shades of green against a blue and white sky, the air still pure and refreshing.. Steeped in antiquity, it just lies there letting the cares of the world go by.
Perhaps my heart is drawn there because there is something inside me that is not so far removed that it still has a great tug on my mind and soul, saying that’s where I belong, or where I came from, so long ago. Two hundred years, or three, is nothing compared to the surrounding landscape, and that it is perhaps where my ancestors once breathed in the same sights, and sounds, and smells. What is it in my genes that draws me to that simple life outside the hustle and bustle of the city, to the fences of dry stones, the green ridges and valleys, interrupted only by roaring streamlets of water and calm, shimmering lakes?
Probably an inherited deep call of nature that lures and holds us all. It might be entirely different if I lived there. But I have seen it, and my mind and heart can return there occasionally to experience it again. To lie back in a small rowboat, drifting on a small, quiet lake, watching white, puffy clouds go by against a deep blue sky.

There are still lush green places - - in Eden.

Donald L. Cohagan © 5-30-2007