First Thoughts of Armagh

Ireland 209

I’m standing on a tiny rock sticking out from the stone wall of a ruined Irish friary.  Below me is nothing but six feet of air, hard ground, and even harder rocks.  I’m not sure how I got up here, and I’m even less sure how I’m getting down.  To my right is the hole in the wall I’m trying to reach.  I stretch out my leg.  Nope, it’s not reaching.  If I was more athletic, I might take the risk, but my greatest physical achievement lately is running on the treadmill for fifteen minutes straight.

I wriggle around and take a seat.  The view is stunning: crumbling architecture graced with wildflowers; trees sheltering green grass; and a family enjoying their picnic.  At least if I fall, they can contact emergency services.

In a way, this picture perfectly sums up Northern Ireland.  Sometimes, it feels like I haven’t left South Carolina.  The same fields spread across the land; the same squirrels climb the same trees; the same metal guards line the highways.  Other times, the country feels so magical, from the Georgian architecture to the leprechaun statues hiding around town to the beautiful music coming from the mouth of every local.  And then there’s that little bit of danger: cars coming from the wrong direction, barbed wire lining some of the rooftops, and my twenty-minute “row with a chip-and-pin machine” (which involved no less than three cashiers pushing buttons in a self-serve line trying to make my American card work with a scanner I had probably already broken just by touching it).

Sometimes the country feels disappointingly modern.  When there’s a Subway on the corner and Wi-Fi in the hostel, it almost makes me wonder why I left home.  But then I see Ireland as it should be, a nation that is a blend of nature, religion, magic, and architecture, and populated by some of the world’s greatest people.  Those moments are the ones when I feel most at home.

So now it’s time to return to my own temporary home.  I look down.

Oh.  This may be more complicated than I thought.

One comment

  1. Terri Ciofalo's avatar

    I think you have something interesting to explore in the contrasts you identify. That is something that I find intrguing here too. Sometimes I feel as if I “know” something because it is just like home. Other times the simplest things, like how to turn on the hot water or how to operate the stove, trip me up and make me feel like I don’t belong. It gets even more complicated when I start to think about what I believe or what I think others believe. I find the things that ground me sometimes are the things that I must abandon to understand this new place.I’m looking forward to investifating these conrasts more deeply.