Unprepared Pilgrims

---

Welcome to the Mizen Peninsula. If you look at a map of Ireland and find the southwest coast, you'll see several peninsulas down there with several smaller little ones coming of them fractal-style called "heads." I'm on Three Castle Head, named for the three-towered 13th century castle located a stone's throw from my house, on the Mizen Peninsula. The Mizen Peninsula features Skibbereen, which at 2 main streets is the largest town on the peninsula, and really the largest one before you reach Bantry, northwest by about an hour. It's really not that far from one town to the next here, but it takes a fair while, because the roads are so winding so as to accomodate the rolling--and sometimes spiking--terrain. The unifying element is that it is all breathtaking.

Now, backing up a bit. I got here from Wexford by way of Kilkenny, where I spend two nights and one full day walking around, hearing trad one night, playing in a trad session the next, and busking during the day. I made some pretty sweet coin in about two hours, and I realized that apparently it doesn't matter what you are playing as long as you are smiling. I'd play the same 8 or so measures of something on my guitar or sing the same chorus on endless refrain and nobody would give me anything, but if I smiled and looked friendly as I did it, people stopped and donated. I guess they want to feel like you are grateful, and also like you probably won't beat them down and rob them if they get close to you. It was worth cheesing a grin for a few Euro. It also probably helped that I dressed as homeless looking as I could manage, so I'd really look like I needed it.

From Kilkenny I rode a bus to Cork City where I spent Friday night. Met a couple Irish teachers from Dublin in the Hostel named Pat and Steven. Chanced upon them in the lobby upon my arrival, and within five minutes, put it together that Pat had taught an education course to a friend of mine from high school about 5 weeks earlier when she came over here to study abroad (Cheyenne Riggs, for those who know her). Unbelievable. Half an hour later I was walking back from the store where I'd picked up dinner and bumped into a guy I met in Wexford at a session there who was in Cork City on his way up to Galway. This makes the second time I've chanced bumping into him, as he was also on my bus out of Wexford. Talk about Friday the 13th.

Cork City is another city. While I didn't have time to explore the whole thing, Sheila's Hostel where I made my bed that evening is located on the hill towering right above the city center, so with very little effort and about a four blocks walk I managed to survey everything with a birds eye view at just before sundown. It was epic.

Then, Saturday morning, I took another bus to Skibbereen, where my contacts Tim and Laurance have a stall in the farmers market where they sell chocolate, bread, flowers, and anything else they want to get rid of. They are a great couple, Tim being from Ireland by way of England from the age of 8, and Laurance being from Belgium, Irish by way of, well, her marriage to Tim. They met on a pilgrimage to the legendary burial place of St. John, a walk they revisit from a different starting point each year. Sounds like my next adventure. They're taking Laurance's 73 year old mother on the last 4 weeks of the voyage next summer!

So, the reason I met up with these two. Tim and Laurance are good friends with Dan and Pika, who have a small holding at the very end of the Mizen Peninsula outside of Crookhaven and Goleen on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They are on holiday in Spain for a month, so when I applied to WWOOF (working on an organic farm in exchange for room and board, wwoof.org, check it out) at their farm, they said they couldn't offer the whole "WWOOFing" experience, but they would love a house sitter for as long as I could be there. So I'm here, alone at the end of the world for two weeks with about 70 sheep, 29 ducks, two chickens, 6 geese, a three legged cat named Kila and an ancient German Shepherd named Reuben. Reuben and I have become fast friends, while Kila keeps to herself which is fine by me. I'm eating eggs straight from the coop here every morning, which gives me a strange feeling of self-importance, even though I hardly do any of the work for them. Anyway, Tim and Laurance gave me a ride up here from Skibbereen, fed me dinner the first night, and will offer me a ride into Skib whenever they go in, which is once or twice a week.

The property is owned by a famous artist in Europe named Tommy Ungerer, who writes and illustrates childrens books, among other things. He's also a heavy in the diplomatic realm of the EU, who has him on call for any time they need an artist's face on some pursuit of peace or something. He lives here with his wife, Yvonne, an American woman who spends many weeks at a time in the Himalayas for Yoga classes and other errands in the pursuit of Buddhist enlightenment. She also purifies the water here about nine times and puts all sorts of uncalled for things in there that make the water taste somewhat salty and acidic. Fortunately, Pika and Dan have a water filter, which helps a little, but not much. It's not that bad, and no matter how it tastes, clearly it's clean enough to drink after all that processing.


Oh yes, and the title! Dan and Pika sent Tim a text the other night from Spain asking if I'd gotten in alright, saying they'd been caught somewhere in the rain and realized they'd left their raincoats here at Dun Lough (that is the name of this farm), that they felt like "unprepared pilgrims." I love that term, I feel the same way in the midst of all this space, all this quiet, all this excellence that seems too profound for me to wrap my head and my heart around. Still a bit overwhelmed at the greatness of the gift of this place and my time here. Expect esoteric concepts to surface willy-nilly in my next post, as I have nothing to do here but think, write, play guitar, feed chickens, and talk to a dog. By the way, I like it like that.

Rather than posting pictures from it, here's are the whole albums of Mizen head pictures:

Part 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2251061&l=f173b&id=2719466
Part 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2251066&l=b1075&id=2719466


...and now, art! Pika does these really great clay sculptures, as well as some crazy looking lamps made out of pieces of driftwood. She actually makes a ton of things out of driftwood, including picture frames, the mirror frame in the bathroom, and more sculptures. I'll post pictures of them when I get a chance. I'm going to email her and see how she did it, where she got the other materials for the lamps (the functional stuff) and maybe make one to mail home while I'm here. I haven't met Dan or Pika yet, as they were gone before I got here, but judging from their house and Tim and Laurance's report, they seem really cool. May drop back by here if I have a few days later on in the trip.

---