Yesterday morning, the dog and I rowed upriver in our little row boat. Let me be clear – I rowed; the dog imagined herself Elizabeth I on the royal barge. There wasn’t a cloud in the deep blue sky. Movement away to my right – to the southwest – caught my eye. High in the sky, a flock of birds was flying northwestward in a V formation. They were too far away for me to know what they were; besides, my knowledge of birds is poor. I knew they weren’t geese or ducks, which I associate with V formations. They were smaller and their flying movements were different. They looked black against the blue sky; then again, they might have proved a different colour up close.
After I had been following their path for a short while, the V broke down as the lead birds turned back, through their companions and left across my field of vision, the whole flock following suit in what looked like a more disorganised formation.
I looked farther left, beyond the flock, and saw a lone bird flying in their direction and, behind it, farther left still, another flock of about the same number as the flock that had originally caught my eye. I was transfixed by what happened over the next few minutes.
The two flocks flew in the direction of one another and then both, as if sensing some danger or lacking confidence in the encounter, turned around and flew away from each other. Only the lone bird between the two continued on its direct path from the flock to the left to the flock to the right.
Both flocks turned again, got a bit closer, turned away again suddenly. On and on this went – two steps forward, one step back – with only the lone bird remaining true to its course.
When the two flocks appeared to be only metres apart (but I am a poor judge of distance at a distance), the flock to my left put the brakes on once more and turned back, all except three, who continued forward to join the lone bird, still on its mission to reach the flock to the right.
That was enough because, on the next flight forward, the two flocks came together and appeared to seamlessly intermingle. I could no longer tell which flock was which. As one, they turned and proceeded on the original flock’s northwestward path. Double the size, they formed a V or a W, constantly reshaping as I watched them disappear beyond the hills.
Were they one flock that had become separated? Were they two flocks with one intrepid individual that thought they should be together? Did that individual recognise family or friends? I don’t know. All I know is that for those few minutes I was mesmerized.
These mornings it’s too hot to walk or run. I open the car door and the dog jumps onto the back seat. I drive a couple of kilometres up out of the fishbowl of the village, over the hill and down into the next valley. At this hour, the dog and I are the only domesticates. But we are not alone. I head for the trail that runs west along the tributary, following it towards the point where it joins the great flow of the main river. The hills rear up all around – the bare grey bedrock, the golden sunburnt undergrowth, the twisted olive and almond trees. Above, like a cutout backdrop, the sky, so tangible in its blueness – surreal, unreal, real.
A rustle in the undergrowth and I catch a brief glimpse of a blackbird. A butterfly, statue-still on a dead leaf, flutters to life, suddenly surprising the dog. Sound and movement – the one indistinguishable from the other – reveals a snake, sluggishly departing the patch of path where it’s been indulging in a morning sun bath. It slithers up the hillside, its tail disappearing under an asparagus bush.
I leave the trail and descend to the riverbank. The dog, ahead of me, turns back and tilts her head, asking if are we going to swim or stay on the path. ‘Go on,’ I say, and I hear her splashing into the water even as I am still gingerly picking my way through the brambles, getting snagged on my shoulder and on my hip, and popping a couple of blackberries in my mouth.
I step out of my shoes and take my dress off over my head. As I step down, feeling the water on my toes, my eyes are drawn upwards to the towering hill on the other side of the river, beyond the narrow floodplain. I hear hooves on rock and see movement. I’m transported back more than twenty years to the Kivalliq, to an evening when I sat on an esker at dusk and heard a chorus of clicking behind me. Before I had a chance to turn around, I was engulfed in a sea of caribou – does and bucks and calves – their hooves click-click-clicking as they gently snorted and snuffled their way past me. I didn’t move for fear of frightening them. I sat and I saw and I heard and I smelled and I felt them. Now, on this little riverbank on the other side of the world, I hear the click of hoofs on rock as a small herd of four slender female deer and two calves high step up the hill.
I fully immerse myself in the warm water that is so refreshing after the heat of even this early hour. I cross the river, the dog swimming alongside or leaving me to swim alone, and coming back to me again. I hear a splash to my right but see nothing. I focus on that patch of river, treading water for twenty, thirty seconds. My concentration is rewarded. A 30 cm silver fish throws itself out of the water, for the briefest of moments suspended in the air, the sun reflecting on its glistening silver side. Then ‘splash’, it is gone. Another thirty seconds pass and it reappears – same arc, same glistening body, a few metres further along its journey.
The dog has had enough of swimming. She goes to the riverbank to torment frogs. I imagine them hiding in the rushes, laughing at her foolishness, laughing at their ability to hide from her. On mornings when the tide is high and the water comes up to the rushes, I hear one or two of them plop into the water. The dog never gives up. She also never catches one.
In addition to the frogs, she likes to vigorously roll around in the silt and sand on the riverbank, turning her white fur a dirty brown, gathering up a collection of grit to deposit in the house later. When I finish swimming, I step into my shoes and walk for a while in just my swimsuit, drying off before I put my dress back on. There’s a pool of water under the bridge, close to where I’ve parked the car. I’ve seen this whole valley completely submerged but now, at the height of summer, the river has dried up, leaving pools of varying sizes and depths. This one by the bridge is the first and the biggest, occasionally reconnecting to the tributary when the tide is especially high.
I search for a stick to throw so the dog will go in for a final swim to wash off the grit. Before I throw the stick, the pool is still – not a ripple, not a breeze moves it. From the corner of my eye I catch a glimmer. I look down. A crab the size of a saucer, iridescent silver and blue, scuttles along amongst and finally disappears under a rock near my feet. I’ve seen surprisingly large fish in this pool, and snakes, and schools of smaller fish, but I’ve never seen a crab here before and I’ve certainly never imagined there would be one so big. I am in awe.
I throw the stick far out into the middle of the pool. The dog, delighted, swims out to retrieve it. When she brings it back, she drops it and walks away; it is her way of telling me she doesn’t want to play this game anymore. We get in the car and come home.
In November 2007, I headed south on a Ken Borrack Air Twin Otter. I’d been waiting all day, with the flight twice delayed owing to bad weather. Both times, I’d been sent home and, each time, got a call a couple of hours later telling me to get myself back to the airport. On the third try, the weather cleared long enough to allow the plane to take off.
Loading the Twin Otter at Arviat airport
The moment had come to fly the sixty miles south of Arviat to the hunting camp, and I boarded the stripped out plane that now only had three passenger seats. The only other human passengers were Nadine, the French-Canadian cook, and Reverend Jimmy Muckpah, minister at Arviat’s Anglican Church. The other passengers were two wooden boxes containing Jimmy’s sled dogs, packed securely for their own safety for the short low altitude flight. What little remaining space was packed to the rafters with a skidoo and some of the boxes of food and other items we’d need.
Lovely, kind Jimmy Muckpah, who knew more about polar bears than anyone I’ve knownJimmy’s sled dogs, who seemed quite content with their travel arrangements
We flew south along the coast to our camp. The others had flown in on an earlier flight and we all helped to unload the plane before it took off again. It would return for us in two weeks. I was to live for those two weeks with five big game trophy hunters from the US, their five Inuit guides, all from Arviat (including Jimmy), and Nadine. The guides, Nadine and I all knew each other, but the trophy hunters were new to me and, indeed, to all of us. I was here for research. I was studying the relationship between humans and polar bears; specifically, seeking to understand the changing role of polar bears in Inuit culture and economy, as international laws about polar bear hunting was rapidly evolving.
Ryan, the camp outfitter, had generously invited me to the camp. What I learned in those two weeks hugely enriched my anthropological understanding of the role of polar bears in Inuit life and I published my findings in various academic journals and books in the subsequent years. My findings were even presented as evidence at US Congress hearings in 2008 that sought to amend US Fish and Wildlife laws concerning the importation of ‘trophy’ polar bears from other countries.
The camp comprised four cabins. The trophy hunters slept in two of the cabins, the guides all bunked together in another, and the fourth cabin – which was also the camp kitchen and eating quarters – was shared by Nadine and me. Each cabin had a ‘toilet,’ consisting of a ‘honey bucket’ – basically a bucket with a seat and a bin liner that we changed every few days. At those temperatures, anything you did into the honey bucket froze almost immediately. Nadine and I had a small room off the far end of the kitchen that contained a bunkbed. She slept on the top bunk and I on the bottom.
Our little huddle of humanity on the west coast of Hudson Bay
Ryan had built his outfitting camp here because it was situated along the polar bear migration route. Indeed, during the two weeks I was there, more than seventy individual polar bears passed through on their winter migration out onto the sea ice. Many of them came close, attracted by the smells of the camp, and snuffled around. We were under strict orders that no-one was to leave the cabins, or go between cabins, without a rifle and to never go alone. The trophy hunters rarely listened to that advice and took stupid risks by walking from the kitchen cabin to their own in the dark. The local guides, well aware of the realities of living in such close proximity with the world’s largest carnivores, were extremely annoyed by the idiocy of the trophy hunters.
I had various roles during those two weeks. I helped Nadine in the kitchen. I went out on hunting trips with the guides and the hunters in their charge. And I helped with skinning and preparing two of the three bears that were killed. (According to international and local law at the time, each hunter could take one trophy bear (they paid tens of thousands of dollars for the ‘privilege,’ some of which found its way back into the Inuit subsistence economy)). During those two weeks, three of the five hunters got their trophy. The other two went home empty handed.
I remember helping one of the guides, Donald, one day as he skinned a bear that had been shot by the trophy hunter in his care. The hunter was back in the warmth of the cabin, enjoying a hot coffee and some freshly baked cinnamon rolls. I held the bear’s huge heavy legs while Donald did what he had to do. It was cold and he wanted to get the work done quickly. So that he could keep his head down and concentrate on the work, he asked me to keep my eyes on the two polar bears that were circling close by and to let him know if either of them started to move closer. They didn’t, but I was shit scared and so was he.
Polar bears came close to and into the camp every day.
The plywood cabins were reinforced with corrugated metal. They had windows that were too small for a polar bear to get through, and the doors were covered with six inch nails, sharp side out, to discourage any bear that might try to break in. Even so, it was pretty scary at times. One particular day, when the hunters and guides had all left camp to go hunting, and Nadine and I were alone in the cabin, a bear came snuffling around. He stood on his hind legs, making him probably 8 feet tall. He looked in the window into our kitchen (imagine, a polar bear looking in at you!), and repeatedly hit against the side of the cabin with his front paws. He was trying to get in. Nadine and I were terrified. We had a rifle, but I’d only ever used it for target practice. Would I know what to do in a real life-or-death situation? Eventually, he gave up with trying to open the sardine tin that was our cabin and started to play around with the big cylinder of propane gas that was our only source of heat and cooking fuel. One slap with his paw, and he knocked the cylinder loose. Before we knew it, he was rolling it around on the ground, playing with it, and now was 20 or 30 metres away. While we were delighted that he seemed to have lost interest in us, we now had a new problem – it was about -15C and a polar bear was using our only heat source as a toy. Luckily, the hunters and guides came back about an hour later and all was well.
Every night when I went to bed, I could hear snuffling outside the cabin. Sometimes, I’d shine my flash light out the small window and see a pair of eyes reflected back. Lying in my bunk, I’d hear snuffling on the other side of the flimsy wall. Imagine my surprise the first morning I went out and saw a very clear indentation in the snow the size and shaped of a curled up polar bear. It was exactly on the other side of the wall from my bunkbed. The indentation was there every morning; sometimes, like in the photo below, accompanied by claw marks.
I didn’t sleep well for those two weeks, let me tell you, knowing that I was sleeping beside a polar bear, with only a strip of plywood and corrugated metal separating us. But when I looked back on it, I understood what a privilege those two weeks were.
It hard to see the indent of the bear’s body in this one, but the claw-mark is right in the centre.
What’s your favourite smell? Freshly mown grass? Fresh coffee? That smell when you nuzzle your face into a baby? Why is it your favourite smell? Do you know?
I was sitting at my desk yesterday morning, the window open to cool the house down before the heat of the day kicked in. That’s when the smell came tumbling in and nostalgia stroked my face like a feather. One of the council workers was strimming the strip of grass that runs the length of my street. And there it was: The smell of exhaust from a 2-stroke engine. There’s comfort in that smell for me and it’s deeply entwined with so many good memories.
We’re living on Carina of Devon. Me and Julian and the girls. The smell of a 2-stroke engine is us leaving Carina to head off on an adventure in the rubber dinghy. Maybe it’s all of us, going ashore to explore a new place or to wander up a river that’s too shallow for Carina‘s draught. Or I’m on my own, the freedom of having the outboard tiller in my hand, setting out to go for a solitary walk or to go shopping or do the laundry. Or it’s Julian, taking the girls across the Rio Guadiana to school. Or it’s all the other yachties we met over the years, the smell and sound of a 2-stroke outboard motor signalling their arrivals and departures from their anchored yachts. It’s adventure and freedom.
Strip that layer away, and I’m living in Arviat. It’s summer, with open sea and lake-pocked land. I have my own quad bike and I zip around town in the near 20-hour daylight, picking my friend Crystal up at 3am, so we can go check the fishing net we’re sharing for the summer, or meeting Frank at 5am to go beluga hunting. His quad has Arden’s boat trailer attached on the back, so I hop on and reverse the quad into the sea under Frank’s guidance; he offloads the boat, as I park the quad and trailer. Or I’m out along the road to the dump, or the road past the reservoir, at twilight or after dark, speeding along way too fast, sometimes alone, sometimes not. In my mind, I’m a badass. In reality, probably not.
Strip that layer away, and I’m living in Arviat. It’s spring, and I’m at the floe edge with Arden. We’ve come by skidoo; him driving, me sitting in the qamutik (sled), facing back towards Arviat, back towards the direction we’ve come from, to shield myself from the powdery snow blown up by the skidoo runners. I’m surrounded by the immense beautiful whiteness of the west coast of Hudson Bay. We’ll stop when we get to the floe edge. Arden will talk to me and teach me, I’ll try to remember everything; we’ll drink tea and eat the bannock Theresa has made for us.
Strip away that layer and I’m at home in Ballygibbon. I could be 10 or 20 or 25. The 2-stroke exhaust is Daddy mowing the lawn. It’s the ease and efficiency of the first petrol-powered lawn mower after years of a small, manual one. It’s me spending summer evenings following Daddy round the garden – at 10 or 20 or 25 – just for his company and the important things we have to talk about – Gaelic football and films and music, a bit of politics and other sports.
When I catch a whiff of 2-stroke exhaust, it doesn’t conjure any one of these times in my life in particular. Rather, it mashes them all up, and loosens something in me, a knot unravels, and a feeling of belonging rushes through my veins. Now, I am here, with a view out my window that’s as green as I could ever have hoped for. And a new layer is added to my love of that smell.
I leave the house by the back door to walk up to the village shop to buy a couple of items to complete our picnic. The patio slabs are strewn with rotting food. Slices of greying white bread turned to mush, slimy pepper, faded to a pale green. Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, all slime and mush. These are the offerings of the previous occupants of the house, thrown directly into the small brown food waste bin and not yet put out for refuse collection. The compostable bag of food waste we have placed in the bin is on the ground too, ripped open, its contents still inside. The ground is a mess.
‘Come look at this,’ I call back into the house to Mammy. We suspect a fox, maybe a badger. A rat perhaps?
‘Buy me rubber gloves,’ Mammy says as I leave for the shop. I walk out the back gate. My eyes are drawn upwards by the noise overhead. Two jackdaws are sitting on the electricity line running behind the row of houses, in loud conversation. ‘Was it you?’ I ask, looking up at them. One of them flies off, ignoring my question.
Twenty minutes later, rubber gloved, Mammy clears up the mess, returns it all to the food bin, and places a large flat stone on top of the closed lid. Secure.
Later, on the path that runs along the back of the beach, a jackdaw flies past at my eye level. It has something in its mouth. I watch it go, see it drop whatever was in its mouth. The bird circles back, lands, picks up what it’s dropped, flies again, drops it again. Repeats. And repeats. This is no accident. It knows exactly what it’s doing, dropping the object on the thin strip of stony path in between the sandy beach on one side and the grass-covered sand dune on the other. With each drop, the object cracks a little more. It’s a mussel. The jackdaw is on top of it now, holding the cracked shell firm with one foot while it pulls out the tasty flesh with its beak. As we walk along the path, I see it is strewn with cracked and crushed mussel shells. Previous meals. Smart jackdaw.
Still, it’s hard to believe that the two jackdaws near the house were the culprits of the knocked over bin. Dropping a mussel shell is one thing. Knocking over a bin is quite another. Maybe I’m accusing them in the wrong. Maybe they were simply taking advantage of another animal’s handiwork.
The next morning, Mammy is first out the door. She can’t believe it. It’s a mess again. The bin lying on its side, the stale bread, slimy vegetables and our compost bag pouring out. The large flat stone she has placed on top has, somehow, been knocked off. And in the middle of it all? The two jackdaws. They fly away when they see her, hurling abuse at her in their language, not at all happy that she has disturbed their hard work. Clever birds.
She’s put two rocks on top of the bin now. Let’s see if they can figure that out.
I visit Drombeg every time I come to west Cork. And each time, I feel a connection to the people who lived here 3000 years ago. Not some hokey connection, like these people were somehow more spiritual or more vital or more at one with nature than us. No. I feel a connection because they were people just like us, breathing in this same air, looking out over the view of the sea cradled in the V of the valley. These clouds hung over them, this rain fell on them, this wind chilled them, this sun shone on them.
While Newgrange or Stonehenge are huge and majestic monuments, stone circles such as Drombeg and the others that dot the landscape of southwest Cork feel much more intimate and ordinary. As astounding as the stone circle is, with its orientation based on deep astronomy, it is the more intimate and domestic elements of this site that move me. It is knowing that the body of a youth was found at the centre of the circle. It is the rectangle water pit, where water was boiled using stones first heated in a fire. Maybe the pit was used for cooking. Maybe it was used for dyeing or some other purpose. We simply don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. It’s that people – men, women, children – sat and walked and played and loved and argued and laughed here 3000 years ago. Ordinary people who couldn’t imagine that 3000 years into the future people would visit what remains of their home and wonder at what they did.
The rain fell sideways as we packed the car this morning. Mammy had moved the car to as close to the door as she could get it. Still, we swopped bags of food and our mini suitcases for water and leaves trailed into the house underfoot.
It was a tight squeeze, five of us and all our stuff filling up the boot and obscuring the rear window. I remember rainy Saturday mornings just like this, in the early 1980s, Daddy hoisting the suitcase, the wind break, the deck chairs, onto the roof rack of the Ford Escort, covering the lot with the blue tarpaulin from an old tent, securing it with rope.
I had the playlist ready for today’s drive to Cork – 80s hits, of course, that we sang along to in between bursts of conversation.
The rain continued – sporadic heavy showers – and wind buffeted the car sideways. We pulled in to the Rock of Cashel for lunch – ham sandwiches made from yesterday’s boiled ham and Brennan’s bread washed down with sweet black tea from a flask. We stood around the picnic table in the rain, the hoods of our raincoats up, as a sudden heavy shower chased away the slash of blue sky that had briefly appeared. I couldn’t have been happier. Few things in the world taste as great as ham sandwiches and tea from a flask on a wet day, memory and nostalgia adding magical flavour to the food.
We reached our destination late afternoon and quickly unpacked the car. My sister started to make dinner and realized she was two ingredients short. Lily and I walked the couple of hundred metres up to the shop in the village square. On the walk back, we were blown down the hill by the strong wind, rain hitting us on the back. ‘This is perfect,’ I said to Lily. A seaside holiday in Ireland isn’t complete unless you get at least one wild night like this.’ The wind, the rain, the slight bite in the air, took me back 30, 40, 45 years, to family vacations here in west Cork, in Kerry, in Wexford, in Mayo.
Tomorrow we plan to go to the beach – in our raincoats, most likely.
Autumn is definitely here. It’s raining more and it’s colder. We lit the fire in the kitchen yesterday. And still, the girls and I remain in Ireland, squeezing every last drop out of this long long summer. In the eleven years we’ve lived in Spain, we’ve never been away this long. Usually, we’d be back by now, going to the pool after our mid-afternoon siesta, or taking the dog down to the dog friendly beach in Isla Cristina.
Yet, here we are, still in Ireland, and one final adventure awaits before we return to Spain. Tomorrow morning, we are driving down to west Cork for a week in Roscarbery. It’s one of my favourite places in Ireland – a picturesque village by the sea, with an amazing beach, great walks – a simply lovely place. Because my aunt, uncle and cousins live there, we’ve been visiting Roscarbery since I was a small child, so it is infused with memories from so many different stages of my life.
Our bags are packed, the makings of the picnic are in the fridge, and we’ll be ready to hit the road after breakfast tomorrow. Forecast? Autumn showers and autumn temperatures. It’ll be lovely.
Our Lithuanian next door neighbours are visiting. Egle tells me they have spent the summer in Lithuania foraging for and eating wild mushrooms.
The very thought of eating wild mushrooms scares the living daylights out of me. Julian used to forage for mushrooms. I ate them once or twice, but never enjoyed them, too scared that I was going to die. I used to tell him, ‘If you’re still alive in 24 hours, I’ll try them then.’ The only wild mushrooms I’ve ever eaten with confidence are the giant puffball and the chicken of the wood, because no other species can be mistaken for them.
But while I’m scared, I’m also envious that my friends have the foraging skills to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones.
This evening, we went walking along the canal in Edenderry with Alisa, who’s been foraging for mushrooms with her parents in Lithuania. As soon as we set out on our walk, my daughters descended on the hedge, stuffing blackberries in their mouths as fast as they could pluck them from the brambles.
‘What are you doing?’ Alisa asked, concerned. ‘How do you know they’re not poisonous?’
I had to laugh. There I was, worrying about the safety of her family’s foraging in her country and here she is, worrying about my family’s foraging in our country. Maybe we all know what we’re doing after all, foraging foods we’ve known since childhood. Before long. Alisa was alongside my girls, searching for the juiciest blackberries she could find.
Me in place 