It’s been a blessing, this idea of going to sea. It came to us from Ireland, not COVID. A year ago, when international travel was still a thing, we came home from watching sunsets over foreign seas to explore waters to the west. As 2020 opened, with its unexpected horrors, we were talking boats.
A good thing, given where we are today — with Americans barred from foreign shores and the thought of breathing next to strangers unappealing.
By the first of March, we chose a boat to suit our older selves and our disparate experiences, from mine (next to…
This story is from Before the Pandemic, when we were still traveling overseas. Honored as best non-fiction and printed by the Nassau Review for distribution in May of 2020, it wound up boxed and locked in a closet when most of New York shut down and the journal lost its editor and staff. Here it is, harking back to former times of travel, with images added…
Discovering the green & the blue
“Congratulations on your 50th trip on the River Shannon!” read a banner over the desk in the boat office as we arrived. The congratulations were not for us. This was our first.
Having circled Ireland’s outer edges two years ago, we were heading for a passage through the midlands, along the Shannon River, which divides the country in half. We were in Carrick-on-Shannon to rent a boat and cruise downstream on current which was running high and fast from recent storms. Happily it was early October; many of the boats were already moored and stored for colder months to come.
…
Wandering western Ireland
First thing I checked each morning, out the upstairs window facing west: Can we see Croagh Patrick? Is its elegant triangle on the horizon? Do shrubs point their shadows across the fields in its direction? Or is it obscured by the weather?
It’s Ireland, mid-September.
Croagh Patrick is Ireland’s holiest mountain. Its nickname is “The Reek,” coming from the Irish Cruach Phádraig, meaning Patrick’s stack. Saint Patrick fasted there for 40 days in 441 AD; pre-Christian artifacts show activity centuries before, when it was called Cruachán Aigle or high mount. At 2500 feet, it’s not the tallest mountain, even in…
my aunt asks when I call.
“We’re still in Lisbon.”
“Still?” She says, with a tone that speaks an unasked question: What do you do for so long, in a place you’ve been before?
Leaving home, I had some questions. After loving Lisbon a year ago, we came again this year to dwell a bit. We unpacked our bags to enjoy two weeks without an early-morning launch toward another destination. Two weeks for markets, some “home-’’cooked food, and to wonder why Lisbon caught my fancy last year.
We had time for errands as well as monuments. One morning, we had two: I wanted to see a shop I’d run across online, and we needed coffee (having finally run out of the Dorothea coffee we brought from home). …
…in Tuscany’s October or Paris in November? Last time, my first, Tuscany was April, and May came along in Paris. They were warm and sunny, lush and green. That time, I was charmed by the somber weight of time in Tuscany’s hill towns. Walking the passageways, I’d aim my camera high, excluding signs of current life and aiming for a sense of timelessness.
There’s a black wall on Rue Oberkampf in Paris. It’s called Le Mur — the wall. We arrived on Saturday when its transformation had begun. There was an artist known as Snake, a ladder, some cans of paint, a few folks watching.
He was already underway when we arrived for a street art tour. We’ve walked through street art in several cities now, which has turned disgust to curiosity and often unfolded beauty where there was blight: Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Lisbon. Now Paris. I don’t love it all, but I love the treasures and the insights that emerge.
