By Bill Diamond
Ireland is a mood of lively green and deathly grey. Its wet embrace wraps people in contradictions and conflicting emotions. That tension contributed to the allure for Kera. Driving alone on the cramped lanes, the clash of verdant vitality and heavy foreboding seeped into her perception. The moody power was present at the prehistoric burial mounds of Newgrange, and the stormy Cliffs of Moher. Everywhere, a Celtic pessimism whispered that our only certainties are challenges and mortality.
To others, she explained the trip as a vacation break. She hoped for more. Her existence was stymied. The trip was a search for connection. To bring meaning to the montage of her life, Kera sought an understanding of distant ancestors and their formative land. The immutable informing the ephemeral. An appreciation of universal and timeless tribulations to give perspective on her grinding everyday trials, and insights to anchor her drifting life. She secretly wished to refresh her soul. Or, find if she had one.
A stacked-rock bulwark in the middle of nowhere was not on her itinerary. You’d never stumble across the Iron Age Staigue Fort. It was listed on a ‘local attractions’ map when she’d stopped for a warming cup of tea in a County Kerry village.
“This has potential,” she murmured.
The deserted fort huddled in low hills five kilometers north of choppy Kenmare Bay. Kera was almost deterred by the lowering clouds and the chilly September drizzle. But, she left the Wild Atlantic Way and traveled a serpentine road inland. No other travelers made this diversion. Dense hedges were moving to reclaim the age worn path. As the track constricted, Kera sensed she was wafting back in time.
At the empty car park, there was a last vestige of civilization in an honesty box collecting a one Euro ‘Land Trespass Charge’. She paid and trespassed. An uneven trail wound to a protective ditch outside the wall. On rare clear days, you could glimpse the distant ocean. Not today.
A bog of fog isolated the depression. The air smelled of water. A permanent, inundate your mind, soddenness. Sheep wandered the stone-lined fields as they have for damp millennia. A waterfall of grass flowed down the slope and lapped the meandering rock walls. Trees were tinted with the first hints of fall color and a foreboding of the end.
Isolation enveloped the place. A daytime gloaming stole the light and shrunk the world.
Kera eyed the imposing fortress. The structure wasn’t a castle or home. More a walled encampment. It must have seemed immense when constructed. Lifeless ruins tell only so much about the time and people. A sign informed her archeologists believe the ring fort was built between 100 and 400 AD. The plaque reflected uncertainty about its origins and purpose. It speculated the edifice “… must have been the home of a chieftain with a great need for security.”
“Security from what?” she whispered and entered the lintel-covered tunnel penetrating the four meter thick wall. The fort enclosed an area about thirty meters in diameter. She dodged the puddles and explored. An imperfect, undulating top rose to six meters. The structure was mortar-free. The builders used the native craft of interlocking stones to achieve stability. Kera had done minor stone work. She marveled at the amount of heavy, hand labor it took to haul these countless rocks and build this citadel.
The interior was bereft of structures beyond two small niches in the wall and criss-crossing stairs to the top. No evidence of lodgings or lives. Yet, the raw stones spoke to the strength of the human spirit. They declared our civilized roots stretch back millennia. Reminders that we all come from a dark place of privation, and ancestors who huddled in fear and cold. In that drudgery, life was limited to a cramped universe defined by a nearby ocean, forest or valley. A reliable well within protected walls was a lifesaving convenience. Any warmth from fire or fur was fleeting. Each day a struggle in the face of easy death. Survival a marginal, moment-to-moment reality.
She leaned against the moist rocks and strained to hear echoes of their ageless everyday concerns. Kera shivered from the damp breeze and the recognition she could have been born to such spare circumstances but for the accident of a few fortunate generations. She did a slow turn to absorb the degraded grey walls. Strong enough to span ages. Weak enough to lose a slow war with the irresistible elements. Old enough to hide secrets of the triumphs and tragedies of lost inhabitants. A home long abandoned, but still inhabited by the history and spirit of her tribal ancestors. They live forever in the descendants they shaped. The vitality of their battles washed away with time. So different in so many ways. Yet, with similar essential needs and desires.
Literal and figurative mists surrounded the settlement and enticed her imagination. Kera whispered questions to the fort, “Why here?” Nothing seemed strategic. It was not atop a hill for defense. Too far from the ocean to promote trade or deter sea attacks. “What fear justified this exhausting effort? What were these massive walls intended to keep at bay?” The builders had a pressing reason, as we do with our critical decisions. Staigue didn’t answer. A secret buried with their bones. The sibilate wind conjured rumors and myths.
Such mysteries stir visceral passions and prompt an illogical dread of lurking enemies and sharp-toothed monsters. Twilight murk further darkened the site, magnifying sourceless sounds and putting Kera on guard for hidden threats. The unnerving isolation brought a hint of kinship with the original residents. As with them, her frail, human vulnerability felt tangible and acute. Her modern mind conjured similar fears and doubt. They had found the strength to fight and survive. Her existence proved that persistence can prevail.
Pensive, Kera moved back to her car and civilization, taking with her the certainty the world was always harsh on this rocky land. The timeless green serenity masked eternal life and death struggles. Her mundane modern anxieties shrunk to their proper size of tractable irritants. Kera’s desire for kinship and bonds clashed with a recognition of why people sacrificed to break the tethers and leave.
At the car, a weathered wood rack displayed small paintings of the fortress. Consistent with the soggy climate, the paintings were in a misty impressionistic style. They captured a land blurred by fog, and, fuzzy, preconceived notions. The paintings cost twenty Euros and were monitored only by leprechauns. She bought a pocket-sized treasure to placate the unseen goblins and remind her of deep-rooted connections.
Like many places in Ireland, Staigue and its spirits put Kera in the frame of mind for dark ales. As the locals have done for centuries, she retreated to a low-ceilinged pub. There, she brooded on subliminal bonds to abandoned lands and departed kin.
She embraced the blessings of her ancestors’ escape. They survived, and some thrived. Could she do less with more?
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Bill Diamond is a curious traveler from Colorado. He writes for catharsis and to try and figure it all out.