05.12.16

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.  An Irish blessing

I texted Tini this photo, upon arriving home to our lake yesterday.  She wrote back, “you live in Ireland!”   We had talked about Ireland one evening over dinner while we were at Chico together.  That first bike trip she took us all on, some thirty years ago, to the remote and wild beauty of Achill Island, was the inaugural trip of her adventure travel company, Challenge Unlimited, and we laughed–and shuddered–at the challenges we all survived together over there.

Every time I’m in Ireland, I say I could live there.  It does feel like home–at least in the springtime when it’s green and misty and quiet here.  It was cold in Chico with snow covering the lilacs.  I was happy to be back to our greens and blues, to home.  It felt like a long time away; maybe because I turned another year older on the calendar.  We celebrated all the May family birthdays and Joy, Anna and I participated as three generations in the Montana Women’s Run once again.  John and Debbie came for cupcakes and ice cream and we talked story well into the last night we were there.  And, then, tales of Ireland at Chico Hot Springs with my oldest friends.  Another year has passed in my life, and now I am starting the approach to the seventh decade.  It is good to be back at home just now.

The first year we lived at the lake, I wrote Yeats’ beloved Irish poem into my journal.  It is just so good to be home right now, for I shall have some peace there.

Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
– W.B. Yeats