...Down The Burren Way

Hike over Doolin

I feel like a little teabag, this place is beginning to steep the mess out of me.  It is beginning what I'm praying will be a slow, steady process of learning to let go on every level, slowly steeping out the hurts and regrets and roles I was never meant to own.

Steeping out my false idols, and expectations, and fears.  Changing my perceptions of limitations, limitations I'm learning are more cultural construct than truth.  Steeping out my western inclination of prioritizing productivity above relationships.  Steeping out the racing pace of my insides, and my tendency to draw anxious conclusions, always too quickly.  Exchanging my need for answers with my need for questions.  Enforcing my deep need for wondering, and wandering.  Not helping me to find myself, as some suggested before I left, but rather, helping me to lose myself.

Ireland is not brewing Katie Tea without infusing me with some of its most delicate, riotous flavors.  The sea air, and the humor of the locals, and the rain.  The all-day-long tea, the vulnerability of my roommates, and the unlimited hours of hiking obscure paths in silence and solitude.  It's the gentleness of Kevin, an Inis Oírr local who shyly found me to a few times during my visit, just to check on me, and ensure I was okay.  It's teaching me to respond to what my body actually needs, instead of the shoulds I'm working on unlearning.  It's listening to the Psalms while the sea crashes into the limestone that holds me precariously above the rising tide.  Because geepers, does the western coast of Ireland enforce my certainty of a divine, expansive creator.

The Cliffs of Moher (Irish: Aillte an Mhothair)

There's a reverence here that stretches beyond any religious organization, or relic hanging in the windshield (of which there are aplenty).  It's the reverence of the people for their own land, and history, and language.  It's how the traditional music so perfectly reflects the crashing of the sea against the coast, in ways I never before understood.  It's the reverence with which they steward their natural resources, and each other.

Tomorrow I will try to hike over the length of the cliffs to my next village, which I think is over 20 kilometers away.  It'll be my first long trek with my overstuffed pack, so I'll gratefully dole out my clothes to my sweet, under-packed Swiss roommates.  I'm more powerfully citied-out than I realized, so will stick to this holy, powerful coast until I've absorbed enough of her to move on.