Mining My Story

Mining my Story

~ A Returning Home Journey to The Beara Peninsula, Day 2

We were exhausted yesterday.  The 5-hour time change is a bitch.  And though I’m not unfamiliar with pulling all-nighters, they eventually cause a hard crash.  Plus, the rain and clouds made it easy to sleep for hours.  The beds are comfy. The place is warm and cozy.  It was so lovely to open the blinds in the morning (well, ok, the afternoon) and see the Atlantic Ocean greeting us from the other side of “the pond”.  We finally got moving and decided to head back to the Temple to check out the café before it closed at 4 PM, and then on to our first hike; the hills, and mines of Allihies.  The very handy benefit about visiting Ireland this time of year, is that sunset is around 10pm. So, we still had plenty of daylight ahead of us.

The Temple goodies were yummy, and gluten free.  So far, I am finding lots of gf options, including a delicious sourdough bread.  I’ll be freezing some of that for my return!   The shrine room was closed, but there was a flyer for yoga classes – I’ll probably check those out after Liam heads home.

On to Allihies and some gorgeous views along the way.  This will be a given for every drive for the next three weeks.  Allihies was about 10 minutes down the narrow, windy road. More death defying driving as the locals whizzed toward us at 60 mph on what is essentially a one lane road where I live.  We parked and looked at the maps mounted on the walls across from the store.  Comparing those with the info we had, we opted for the 2-hour hike, instead of the 3.5 to 4-hour hike, so that we could also head over to the beach before sundown.  We stopped into the little market and bought some of the necessary maps to navigate the countryside by foot.  We had a hiking book that gave directions like “park at the yellow church in Allihies, walk north and pass a pub, a BnB and a hostile. Turn right on the path and the left onto the ‘green road’ (the green road being stamped down grass at the edge of a field), cross over a stile (a 2-sided ladder that allows one to climb over a barbed fence) and continue up hill until you see the ‘yellow man’ marker.”

From there, the paths are quite well marked.  It was not particularly hard to find the entrance, it’s just one feels they are on private property the entire time, with sheep and fences everywhere, and homes scattered about.  I am coming to realize that this is one of the many charming features of Ireland.

We could see a stone structure as we walked up into the hills.  I watched Liam striding ahead of me toward the now abandoned mines and wondered what might have been different in my life if I had known where I came from at his age.  If I had known anything about my family beyond my parents and grandparents; what my ancestors did for work, who they were, their names, what their lives were like.  I wondered what might have been different for my father if he had known.  I wondered why the stories had not been told by my grandfather, or if he even knew any of them, besides that his mother was from Co. Cork.  She died when he was only 4 or 5 years old, of the Spanish flu in 1919, the last global pandemic.  So, I suspect he just didn’t have anyone to tell him anything at a time when he might have wanted to know.

What must it be like though, to know for a few generations back, or more, one’s lineage?  My father’s parents didn’t share because they either didn’t know, or didn’t want to share, and on my mother’s side, her mother grew up in an orphanage and her biological father was out of the picture when she was an infant.  The orphan archetype was prevalent for me in every direction.  No wonder why I conjured up stories of being from the moon when I was a little girl, the stories all had to come from my own imagination, and even as a little girl, I knew there was something beyond the humans I could see, touch, and hear.

As we walked through the muck, and occasionally onto rocks to step up out of the wetness, I remembered a conversation I had with my dear friend Lee two years ago, while visiting her in Costa Rica.  We were talking about the concept of “belonging”.  I was probably reading a book about it, and I was making an observation about her – that no matter where she seems to land in the world, she fits right it, and better yet, creates a community.  She helps others to always feel that they belong with her and she exhibits a sense of certainty that I find to be very comforting, welcoming, and grounding.  She is a seeker for sure, inquisitive, questions the world and why it is so, which I love because we do that together, but I was curious about this idea of belonging. Did she feel what I observed, and if so, how is that? I asked her.  She told me that she knows about her Jewish lineage, the people and where they come from, generations back, on both sides.  She told me what it was like to grow up in Israel with so many relatives and so much family that there was always a home to be gathered in, people to welcome you and stories to here about from long ago.

I certainly felt loved by my family, its not that I did not. But I did not know much, really.  I was without a story.  I knew my own birth and my mother’s, and then my grandmother’s abandonment at an orphanage because the priest forced her mother to do so.  That is where my story started, until I had traveled to Ireland a year before this visit with my friend in Costa Rica.  And I wondered if “no story” contributed to a sense that I had my whole life that I did not really belong.  I did not feel like I belonged in my classes in grade school, middle school, or in the “honors” program in high school.  I didn’t belong to any of the clubs or teams I tried out for (I never made any of them, or the student council positions).  I didn’t ever really feel like I belonged at dance, though I loved dancing itself.  I didn’t feel like I belonged in nursing school, in part because I was the only one working full time, and I never felt like I belonged in a traditional nursing job, like a hospital.  I always found my own way, something different, alternative, a creative path.  My experiences have all been formative, and I have wonderful friends and I know that I “belong” to my family.   But I adapted to the feeling of not belonging quite early in my life.  I was accustomed to it. And I know a good deal of it is quite normal, especially in adolescence. But from what Lee and I were sharing, our experiences of belonging were quite different, and perhaps the difference was entirely due to knowing or not knowing our lineage.  At least, that seemed to be so given our experiences, because otherwise, in many ways we are a great deal alike.   She responded, that along with knowing her lineage, she always felt like she belonged.  She didn’t have this seeking to belong that I seemed to experience so much in my life.

Onward we hiked and found the mines.  One structure was completely in shambles.  A few partial walls remained.  Another structure, higher up, still had all the walls, and a chimney. It was fenced off, because just in front of it was an old mineshaft.  These buildings were pump houses, that burned oak wood for energy to pump water out from below the earth so that more copper could be mined.  The mines went nearly 500m deep, and about ½ of that was below sea level.  There were a couple of stone houses, that would have had thatched rooves, I imagine for the miners to sleep in at times, especially those who had to travel to work in the mines.  My family lived just over the hills, so they probably made the trek every day.  One of the historical accounts that we read said the women and children would work just outside, around the pump houses, and use rock to chip away to get at the copper.  The rocks remain all around the edge of the hillside.  I wondered if the women and children in my family worked there along side the men.  My great-grandmother would have been born at the peek of the industry, in 1875, just after the pump houses were built to increase production.  But, by the time she, and the men of her generation came of age, the price of copper had dropped due to the world markets, the mines had closed, and once again, the people of Ireland were hungry.

Liam and I continued, through the hillsides, around farms and down a dirt road back to town.  We headed to the beach, had some fun with photos and headed north east up the peninsula so that we could see the sunset as we drove along the cliffs.  Spectacular.  I am sure it is the most beautiful place on earth. I wondered if the people who left here knew that, how could they if it was the only place they had seen until they arrived on the shores of New York City.  They must have missed home, terribly.  Maybe that’s why there were no stories told.