“If I wanted to stand in sheep shit in the rain, I could’ve stayed home!”

That’s Bob’s favorite quote from me from the trip.  The tourism website’s description of October in Ireland was “cool and crisp…with plenty of daylight.”

I’d add soggy and windy to that description.

Like most Irish Americans, my “immigrant story” begins with the potato famine.  I know nothing else.  I don’t know who was sent.  I don’t know what they came from, or what they dreamed of.  I surmise that the hunger had a lot to do with the why of their journey.

But Bob and I didn’t choose to go to Ireland to trace those roots in any way.  We chose the trip simply because we had once seen drone footage over the Dingle peninsula, and we both longed to traverse those pastures and cliff edges with our own feet.

Well. We learned just how wet those pastures and cliff edges can get.

But we walked on.  And on and on and on, through countless sheep pastures, pouring rain and howling winds, til we could find our way back indoors at the end of each day, where we warmed ourselves from a bottle of whiskey.

As we walked, we gazed at sheep after sheep after sheep.  I couldn’t stop marveling at the familiar feel of spongy pasture beneath my boots, at the familiar scent of wet wool and sheep poop, at the familiar sensation of stepping over fences, and opening and closing gates.  It’s just amazing….that my ancestors travelled so very far….yet here we are, so many generations later, still surrounded by pastures, sheep, and their droppings.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

It was a great journey, and it’s good to be home again.