Following My Muse

In May I will be walking through western Ireland alone with a backpack and a deep longing to lose myself in that landscape. When Todd and I rode our bikes there in 2017, the green hills of Limerick made me cry and even though rain soaked me through on our way to Doolin I felt a love for this land like none other. Sitting in the pub that night, packed tight with warmth and smiling faces, the fiddle music wooed and held me on moist air. When we flew home two weeks I knew I would return. 

With the pandemic in 2019 came a new intensity to my work as a consultant in schools that has not let up. First it was to pivot my work to the online demands, then it was the call to collaborate in order to better meet the growing need for restorative work. Ironically, as I increased the focus of my trainings to support educator's mental health, mine faded. This year however, I've taken more and more steps to practice what I preach, which is to create more quiet, unplugged time to rest and connect with what feeds me.

My decision to travel back to Ireland was fueled by re-listening to Krista Tippet's interview with John O'Donohue called the Inner Landscape of Beauty. He begins by saying,  

"What amazes me about landscape, landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time." 

He goes on to talk about the landscape of his youth—The Burren in Western Ireland. As I recalled walking on that stark landscape with Todd I could feel my body and mind relax. O'Donohue says, 

"Well, I suppose I was blessed by being born into an amazing landscape in the west of Ireland. And it’s the Burren region, which is limestone. And it’s a bare limestone landscape. And I often think that the forms of the limestone are so abstract and aesthetic, and it is as if they were all laid down by some wild, surrealistic kind of deity. So soon, being a child and coming out into that, it was waiting, like a huge, wild invitation to extend your imagination. And then it’s right on the edge of the ocean, as well, so the conversation — an ancient conversation between the ocean and the stone going on."

Only a few weeks after listening to these words, I had booked my tickets for a three-week walkabout starting on The Burren Way. From there I plan to travel North to Gort by bus where Sir Dermot O’Shaughnessy and his family lived in the Gort castle until 1697 when King William III confiscated the property. Galway will be a short bus ride from there where I will stage another walkabout along the Western Way. All this is a sketch of a plan. All I know for sure is that I will walk the Burren, I will walk alone and I will let the rest unfold.

Me on top of the Gap of Dunloe, 2017