Section I
2022
Beginning Again c at h e r i n e d r e a
I
n the dreamtime of last winter, I had pored over maps of the Mediterranean. I was searching for ferries to cross from mainland France to the islands off the coast of Italy. Every so often I would shout some update across the room, “Wow, there’s even a boat from the southernmost tip of Sardinia all the way to Sicily!” As the lockdown drew in, Italy began to fade as a possibility. Sun-drenched villages and mountain walks, the places I saw as my eyes closed each night, were increasingly sketchy. By the first morning of lockdown, our annual pilgrimage was definitely off. Staying home was not the biggest challenge. Living in rural isolation has been my life for many years. As a child, when nothing else was certain, Mother Nature provided alternative nurturing. I am acutely aware of the preciousness of this place. The real challenge of being stilled, would be to keep moving. While being on the road, is to experience a kind of vitality that nothing else measures up to; I already knew that the simplicity of wandering on foot can also delight the soul. So instead of dreading the sameness of the path ahead, I decided to try to see each lockdown day as another fresh start. For the last ten years I’ve written and photographed everything that moves in this small rural network of townlands. At the centre is Ballyscanlon, a deep volcanic lake surrounded by an edge of pine and meadow. To the east there is Carrickavantry, a lake formed as a reservoir to feed water to the local town of Tramore and to the west, the Comeragh Mountains. My neighbours, for the most part, are farmers and their offspring. Like much of Ireland they only produce beef. While I’m sometimes guilty of romanticising nature, I am conflicted, to say the least, by the aspiring cattle ranching landscape that has emerged here in recent times. I have lived through many losses of land and biodiversity. Nature has rich cycles of growth and decline, but I am often troubled by even the subtlest changes. Why are there so many ferns this year? Why are the butterflies slower to emerge? Is my support of the bird population doing away with too many caterpillars? I know the crisscrossing tracks and trails like the back of my own hand. I know the seasons and the bloomings of everything that thrives here; every tree and plant, every bird and small creature. But I also know that I will never come close to unraveling the infinite mysteries in the place. Every day, as I decide to begin afresh, I walk. We all do. At first we are restricted to a 2k limit. After a few weeks we are allowed 5k. The outer world shrinks yet expands. I go from watching a wood mouse and a bank vole tussle over some spilled bird seed, to pursuing the
The Lowell Review
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