Looking for Adventure

I feel the need for an adventure.

To my contradictory delight and consternation, I’ve been left to myself. My host and her three children have gone off on a two-week holiday. They’ve left the dog with family and have roped a neighbor in to come and feed the chickens and the rabbit.

The cat I let in and out as I see it and that’s okay. My responsibilities are negligible.

I’ve got the run of the house.

This is wonderful. And yet, somehow, the isolation, the solitude, isn’t quite what I want. On the one hand, yes absolutely, it is. I love having the kitchen to myself. I love being able to fill up the space under roof and between walls with my own being, habits, and routines. To make noise or silence as I see fit. I do like the freedom of living alone.

On the other, I’d also like the noise of a café, the bustle of a pub, the chance to eavesdrop on conversations and the opportunity to watch people do their people things, the quick ease to run to the store to get some fresh bananas if I need them, and access to points of interest whether historical or otherwise. I’d like some human interaction. On my own terms, of course. Not too much. But some.

What a lot of trouble I am.

What a contradictory beast.

What an inconsistent thing I’ve become.

The day before she left, my host graciously took me to the big store in town to load up on groceries. So, like in my times in the wilderness, with what I’ve stocked up on, I can be self-sufficient. I can get by with what I have.

I wake on my first day alone and feel the emptiness of the house like a gift.

Already, I’m using my time wisely; reading, writing, catching up on the administrative details of my life, staring out the windows at the changing cloudscape and the moving cows.  

This day, though, with the sun brightly shining, I feel cooped up. My thoughts are a jumbled mess and I have some writing-related decisions to make. I’ve got fictional lives to plan. Shoot, I’ve got my life to plan. Everything feels so serious. A walk will help sort me out. An adventure will be just the thing.

Not wanting an epic adventure, only a short, interesting-but-not-too-time-consuming one, I head toward the nearest village called Clashmore. I’ll go as far as the little bridge. Then I’ll see how I feel and what else I want to do. It’s a good enough plan.

The day is warm. The air is nice. I’ve got my sunglasses on and the road to myself. The trees stir in the wind. A flock of birds circles a patch of nearby field in a very buzzardly way and then, suddenly, as if called, they all fly off together. I come around a bend. Some cattle are lowing. A sound which is nothing like what I imagined when I was a child singing along to Christmas carols. This sound is more like a bullhorn, like a drawn out complaint. Maybe they have their lives to plan out too.

The longer I walk, the more at ease I feel. The restless energy I have to be productive and to achieve, achieve, always achieve is held at bay a little.

Meanwhile, I make it to the bridge. I lean my elbows upon the moss covered stone and gaze down to see what I can see.

A leaf twirls and glides through the water, graceful and carefree. As I observe its path, I forget my quintessence of dust. I smile. It’s these simple things, the watching of a leaf being carried down a stream, the shadow of a flitting butterfly, it’s these things that make me happy, that take me out of too much thinking and let me settle down.

These things.

The leaf drifts against a rock, wavers, folds into place over the sharp curves. Will it be carried on? Will it be stuck forever? Oh, the suspense!

As Willy Wonka said, “I hope it lasts.”

But as another saying goes, This too shall pass. And so it does. With the stream’s current to guide it on, the leaf is carried a little further into a growing, watery pile of other collected leaves, sticks, and organic matter. Its journey, for now, has come to an end.

Well, that was exciting.

With the nature show over, I look up and around.

I haven’t come quite prepared enough to go into Clashmore for more than a walk about. I’ve left my wallet behind. And I’m not feeling so energetic as to want to make my excursion longer than a small handful of miles.

Yet, still, one floating leaf is not distraction enough for today. It’s not adventure enough.

Not really knowing what else to do, I head back toward home. But when I come to the fork in the road, I go right instead of left. Why not? Why not see where all roads lead.

Some time later, when the pavement changes texture, I decide I’ve gone far enough with aimless, purposeless wandering. I turn around.

I haven’t retraced many of my steps when the sound of a car comes from behind me. I move over to give it plenty of road to drive upon, but it slows and stops.

An older man leans an elbow out the window and asks, “Are you going far?”

“I’m just out for a walk,” I say.

“It’s a nice day for it,” he says, or something like that.

“It’s really nice,” I agree, and then carry on with weather talk to say, “I think it might rain a bit later on.”

“Hmm,” he says, or maybe he says “aye” like the Scottish do. His accent is nicely Irish and he speaks with a soft, burring mumbling that’s a bit hard to follow. “Aye, we need it.” He starts to move forward again, talking still to me as the car inches on and away. “I thought maybe you were heading into Clashmore.”

“Thank you,” I say. For the implied offer of a ride, for the kindness, for the human connection.

It’s a little thing, but it’s enough to make me happy again. A leaf. A very short conversation. Enough for now. Content, I go back home and do all those solitary, writerly things that I so often do. That I’m supposed to do. That I enjoy doing.

With the morning comes a gusty rain. I take my time with my coffee. I take my time with my breakfast. I do my writing first thing. When the clouds break, I feel the itch to move. I pack my bag with water and put together some snacks.

Once again, I go out looking for an adventure.

This time I’m heading toward the big town.

Youghal, pronounced Yooull, is like the big city to me, filled with people, shops, buses even. From Youghal the whole world could be reached. It’s just a matter of getting there.

Much like the day before, I’ve decided, once again, to only go as far as a bridge. I’m not sure I want to walk all the way into town and then all the way back home. It’s not exactly that I’m lazy, it’s more the combination of the time and the miles and the energy and my complete lack of a clear and defined end goal.

Where’s my purpose? Where’s my strong sense of purposeful direction?

As I walk, I hug the inside of the road near the spiky hedges, trying to be both visible and out of the way of the passing cars. There’s a fair amount of isolated traffic on this small road. The bridge road, when I reach it, is busy. The bridge itself is even busier. Dare I cross it?

Of course, I do. What’s this strange reluctance I’m feeling? Oh, I know. It’s that strange feeling of not being sure where and how I fit in. Can’t I just be myself no matter where I am? Sure, but I’m still the new kid in town. Ireland is still unknown to me.

See, too much time alone to think.

Anyway, there’s a sidewalk on each side of the bridge. It’s the easiest, safest walking path in this part of the world so far.

Even so, not quite committed to going across, I stand for a moment at the edge of the little road and gaze beyond the bridge at the low tide water, at the buildings that stand across the way and speak out Town with their height and thickness and presence. I bring my gaze back closer. As I evaluate the bridge, I see something. A blue box with words on it. I take out my camera and zoom in. Diner, it says.

That’s like a café.

I’ll cross the bridge after all and go to the diner.

So I do.

The diner is in a little blue trailer off the side of the busy road which goes in and out of Youghal. As I approach, I see the name and I almost laugh out loud. JJ’s American Style Truck Stop.

Go figure.

I scan the menu placard conveniently placed outside and think I’ve got nothing to lose. Wasn’t I wanting something like this?

I go in and take a look around.

The inside wall is decorated with quippy sayings like: At this Location in 1836, absolutely nothing happened, and with old State license plates: New York, Texas, Kentucky, Arizona, Oregon, Oklahoma.

I feel like I could be in East Texas at some greasy spoon diner. I order some chips and a cappuccino and sit to see if I am or not. Isn’t this Ireland?

The two men next to me are speaking and I’m reassured. Their accents are not American. And they might even be speaking Irish. I can’t eavesdrop well enough over the background noise of music, voices, and traffic to really listen in, but I’m appeased.

I had a friend once tell me that I was helping her be human. Which was a funny thing to say. But now, here, I feel that this little adventure across the Youghal Bridge is helping me be human too. It’s so easy to feel out of touch. To feel too distant, too out in the country, too far away. It’s so easy to become a hermit and forget what it means to interact with others. I can so easily forget how to move beyond the little piece of the world I find myself in.

I’m glad for the reminder that I’m not limited to one small place. The world is accessible. The world is here. The world is what I make of it.

Well, tomorrow or the next day, I’ll plan a real adventure and venture out further and farther. Maybe I’ll figure out how to get to the castle ruins I’ve seen from the wrong side of the river. Maybe I’ll make it all the way into Youghal on my own two feet. Maybe I’ll even take a bus somewhere. God help me, I’ll do something that will be worth writing home about.

Room With a View

I’ve been living too near the sea.

I’ve been reading too much Virginia Woolf.

For I want to talk of things in terms of the tide. Of life as an ebbing and flowing, of the slate-gray peaks, the riding white horses of the crests, of the tumultuous raging of a storm and then the dead still silence of calm.

After three weeks of traveling, exploring, and adventuring with my family, now I have time to sit and think. I have time to recall the motion of the sea. Loads of time. It’s the calm. But for the chickens, the cows, the dogs, the cat, the children, the rabbit, the birds, and the buzzing flies it’s the dead still silence.

For a brief moment in my first hours here, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have chosen a place closer to the city rather than this charming and remote location.

For even after the wildness of a storm, isn’t there still a catching of the breath, a gasping at the sudden stillness (“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”), a need to release the remnants of pent up adrenaline? Isn’t there still within me that need to be completely independent?

It’s five and a ¼ miles roundtrip walk to the nearest shop.

With four shopping bags full of food behind me which my parents got for me on our way in, I stand in my room looking out at the distant hills, the glinting river, at the snow globe sky.

I hardly know what to do with myself.

My parents and sister have only just dropped me off at my new home for the next two and a half months before heading off to Dublin for their flight back home. We had a final cold lunch together at the long kitchen table with my new housemates—human and animal—flitting about.

I waved goodbye with mixed emotions; satisfaction at having done our trip successfully, the inevitable sadness of parting, and a touch of relief at being able to stand still.

“What is this, maybe three or four times your normal level of activity?” my dad had asked at some point during our trip. In between stone circles, ruined cathedrals and churches, ivy-grown castles, restaurants, pubs, walks, hikes, and the long, winding, narrow road.

Yes and no. More than that. Or rather, it’s that the activity held more constant interaction than I’m accustomed to. I’m a strange fish. I know it. Like the solitary panda. That seems fitting, doesn’t it? (Although I just read a few articles that state that giant pandas aren’t as solitary as formerly believed. They do, data suggests, also like to spend time with their friends. Which I also do. So, in addition to my name (Amanda Panda, in this case), yes, I suppose, I really am like a giant panda.)

Still, I’m adaptable. A chameleon, although my colors seem to change just a bit more slowly of late. Still, I’m a creature of habit. I can be both. Can’t I?

With each new place I live, there’s this rocking into place (cresting wave, falling water). The settling into my own old rhythm while trying to simultaneously settle into a new place and its rhythm. It’s the ebb and flow of learning others’ habits and being comfortable in my own. Some places this is easier than others. Sometimes authenticity comes more naturally in one place than in another.

The first morning (long after Bob Dylan the rooster has first crowed), I get up and go downstairs to make my coffee. Here, they use an Aga—a cast iron stove that transfers heat from its core to hotplates and ovens in some mysterious way that’s different from conventional ovens. It seems to take a long time to boil a kettle of water.

Patience is a virtue, I’ve heard.

As I wait, I acknowledge that I’ve grown spoiled to electric kettles, to speed, to convenience, to a faster pace. I wait. To fill the time, I prep my coffee cup, I bring out a bottle of single cream from the refrigerator.

“You put cream in your coffee?” my host asks.

“I do,” I say. Single cream is the closest thing to Half & Half that I have found.

“That’s a bit indulgent, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” I say, still listening for the kettle to sing. “It’s a very American thing to do, I’ve been told.” Another host at another place had said so. And surely, it is an indulgence to know what I like, an extravagance to be able to have things my own preferred way.

Yet, it’s not even my most eccentric trait, I think, taking the kettle off the hot plate to finally pour water into my cup, stirring the cream into my coffee, and then putting the cream away.

How am I odd, let me count the ways.

Of course, I catalog other people’s habits too. And naturally enough, I know myself best. So, how would I see myself as strange from the outside? What habits would I remark upon? What rituals would I note? Those vast hours of staring out the window, perhaps. Those hours walking to clear my thoughts. All those hours sitting. Hours writing. Hours reading. Hours talking to myself. Hours talking to others on the phone or in person. Hours watching the clouds cast shadows and the Blackwater River change from mirror glass to blue to the green-yellow reflection of the adjoining land. My habit of living wherever the wind, opportunity, and impulse take me, perhaps.  

Well, here I am. I’ve come to this place to live in a room with a view for two and a half months. I stand at the window and wonder what I’ll do so far from things, limited (if it can be called that) to where I can walk and the kindness of my host to take me occasionally into town to grocery shop.

The cows move down the field in a straggling line. The setting sun turns the sky pink and then purple. The chickens peck the ground within the confines of their coop. The rabbit runs up the ramp into the upper story of its home. The still river, so unlike the sea, turns pink and purple too.

My family sends me a message that they’ve made it to Dublin. I breathe. They’ve made it without me. They’ve made it.

I breathe.

Traveling with others can sometimes feel like an action movie; jumping from place to place, moving quickly from scene to scene. Being alone is like a poem; sometimes hard to understand but still lyrical. Alone, see, already I’m thinking, overthinking, rethinking.

What will I do with this beauty? What will I do at this place?

I know, I think as if an ocean of inspiration has suddenly struck me, rocked me back to the rhythm of my own life. I’ll make the most of it. I’ll do exactly what I should do. I’ll do exactly what I like to do.

I’ll write another book.

I’ll turn this desk the other way round and sit so I can stare out the window at this unbelievable view as I make things up.

I’ll settle into the rhythm of this place, whatever that ends up being, and I’ll be authentically eccentric. I’ll put cream in my coffee and do, who knows, what other odd things. I’ll do all that while, somewhere not so far from here, the sea will continue to move in and out. It’ll rise and fall, always changing, always moving, while still also staying somehow always the same as it has ever been and ever will be.