Salthill Prom, Seamus Heaney, and a poem.

It's only been an age since I last posted. Ah well.

Our city is wearing snow well this year, and just in time for Christmas, for everything resembles a Christmas card. The trees are coated in frost, the lawns are thick with white, and the moon shines brightly enough to illuminate a bedroom at night.

In between laundry and wrapping birthday presents and all the other things 'to do' this morning, I found a pocket sized notebook from my post-college days, when I was teaching in Galway. There are a few pages where I wrote about seeing Seamus Heaney do a reading on Salthill beach in 2006. It goes a little something like this:

Sun beating down, casting short shadows on the pavement. Jackets off, sweaters around the waist. A gathered crowd at Ladies' Beach. Schoolchildren form a sea of green uniforms.

A gentle breeze shifts the sands. An elderly man kicks a red football toward the brown seaweed scattered shore - his grandchild runs barefoot after it.

And Seamus Heaney, standing on the daisy studded verge between the strand and the street, began to speak of a poem written on the Salthill Prom: "the golden moment of 1965 when I saw them come out of the water, gleaming." Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965.

Wind blows strands of hair, strollers pause, hypnotized; dog leashes lay in the sand. Bicycles park along the wooden benches that run the length of the beach. Dogs lay on the sun-warmed pavement while some go on interrupted by poetry - by the poet. Schoolkids turn cartwheels in the grass, and photographers snap pictures.

Afterward, crowds gathered to get him to sign books, pages struggling in the Atlantic breeze. People wait patiently for his attention - a handshake, a scribble, a nod.

On being Pro-Life, all the way, in an election year.

Halloween has come and gone. Two trick or treaters, the only ones who came to our house, were given generous portions of candy. The rest... is mine. 

Meanwhile, we are counting down the days to the election. Some people are sick to the teeth of political ads, others can't get enough out of a good debate with friends and family, even more moan about the undecided voters, while some 'undecided' voters declare themselves independents who have long since decided, thank you very much.

Ah, polarity. It is usually strong, but right around now the strength that people feel their convictions is staggering, sometimes. It always comes as a surprise when friends open their mouths to chastise one another based on differing political opinion. 

This week the New York Times published an editorial called Why I'm Pro-Life, and it has been on my mind since I read it a few days ago. You may have seen it, it's made the rounds on Facebook, often posted by people who would not normally call themselves pro-life. 

Reading it was like a light turning on inside my head, a sunbeam splitting the clouds, a choir opening up into song. Thomas Friedman put into words what I have felt and thought since reaching the age where I could vote, but have been unable to articulate. He pinpointed the frustrations I feel as a voter, and a citizen. 

I suspect that I'm not alone in this.

In his article, Mr Friedman says:

"The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society."

He also says: 

"You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”"

Here, here, Mr Friedman. 

This is why I have such a hard time in election years - the fact that neither party espouses these values fully - and friends have expressed the same dismay. Many are pro-life in the thorough way that Mr Friedman demands in his editorial. Personally speaking, my trouble comes from my conscience, which has me in turmoil until a week after I step out of the polling booth. 

See,  I have yet to find a candidate who is, like me, pro-life, Friedman style. That is, I'm a strongly anti-abortion, pro-gun control, anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-social justice, pro-insurance reform, environmentalist, pro-gay equality, Catholic feminist voter.

Now I ask, where is my candidate? 

Where is my party?

Who can I vote for that will stand up for everything I hold to be important? For human rights from conception until death,  for quality of life, for respect for our land? Who can I vote for without making an enormous moral compromise?


*crickets* 


But I'll still vote. Always do.

The book sale

Thursday morning:
Library sale, all weekend, starting today. Books $1 per pound.

Oh, yes.

Rang up the mammy, agreed on a meeting time, and hurried into my clothes in the icy morning air that filled the upstairs rooms of our house. The earlier post from this week was about right - yesterday, sleety rain came, covering the sidewalks, handrails, picnic tables,  leaf piles left too late, all in an glassy layer. The trees looked heavy by mid-afternoon The sky has been a low, slate gray since early this morning, and if not for the wide roads, you might think you were on the shores of the north Atlantic. 

So heavy socks it was, a sweater and wool coat bundled round me, scarf up to my nose, and I fairly ran out the door, down the street, hopping over the streams of wet leaves laying in the gutters. Nobody else raked, evidently.

Just a few streets over is the library, where many adult bookworms of today spent their precious summer hours as children, curled up in a beanbag chair with The Boxcar Children or Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the meeting rooms, downstairs, a line of middle aged women was coming out the door. I spotted a friend's mother and said a quick hello before heading in. It was after 11, which is the lunch hour, officially, in North Dakota, and is the time when many people 'get stuff done.' The bibliophilic crowds were there, all right, nosing through the boxes of books laid out on long banquet tables. I headed into the fiction and non-fiction room, buoyed by the thought of new books and a winter filled with long stories by the window.

Immediately, treasures surfaced. A book of American short stories. David Sedaris. Rebecca. Folk songs as played by Pete Seeger. Chocolat.  A Passage to India. Julia Child's My Life in France. A volunteer walking through the crowded room spotted the growing stack in my arms and offered me a blue cloth bag with a tree printed on it. As I walked about the room, the bag grew fuller and fuller. Jodie Picoult and Jacob Have I Loved joined the others in the blue bag, and I had to put it down from time to time to keep the handles from cutting into my arms.

The mammy wandered by, and we shared our finds, plotted a coffee for after we finished.

I found Germaine Greer's 'The Female Eunuch' and Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' in the fiction section. Might be an indication of the politics of whoever was in charge? Let's assume it was a second-thoughts buyer who left them there. 

One book stood out, with gilded page edges and gold lettering on the front. Magpie bait. I cracked open the cover, thumbed through the pages to see what it was, exactly. 1906, gorgeous illustrations, and pages framed in flowering vines. 

It had to be bought, if just for the beauty of it. 

We laid our purchases on the scale, and paid sweet little for them. $7.50 for ten books. That's a frobisch.

In the line, a dark haired woman heard my mother's accent and snagged her into a conversation. This lady had just come back from her father's foreign birthplace, and wanted to talk with another north islander. She was very pleasant until a moment before we said goodbye, when she launched into a critique of immigrants today... reminded me of an older person's 'kids today' speech. The current wave of immigrants into the United States made her heart hurt, she said, with their insistence on clinging to their language and traditions, those people who don't become citizens immediately, those people who come here on work visas and then go back home because they can. Yes folks, you read right - she was complaining about legal immigrants.

My mind went to the Nepalese and Bhutanese refugees I taught in Grand Forks, who are trying so hard to eke out a living in the northern Red River Valley, illiterate refugees in their later years who spent seventeen long winters in mountain refugee camps, ghosts in their own parents' country; who take buses back and forth across the towns each day in the bitter cold so that they can take basic English classes, so that they can improve their job prospects, so that they can feed their children and move their lives into modern America. Why shouldn't they hold fast to their language and traditions? It's all they have left of their old life. I thought of my mother, who waited twenty years before becoming an American citizen, because that - waiting - was her choice.  I could scarcely stop the glower from creeping into my eyes.  What can you say to a person who says things like that, publicly and proudly?

At the same time, across town at the park, my husband was  in conversation with a woman from the Czech Republic, who was there exercising her dog.  Some of the other Americans who came into the park ignored his hello. She was glad to talk.

It makes me angry when people speak of immigrants disparagingly. I came to immigrate in a place of privilege. I am Irish American, which means that I'm a white, English speaking, educated, dual passport holder with an easily pronounced name. Those are the reasons that I'm accepted effortlessly when I go to Ireland, or when I'm in the United States. I know that I've had it very, very easy.

But it's so easy to throw less convenient immigrants under the bus, it's easy to imagine that your own foremothers adapted to the American way of life immediately, that they learned English quickly, and didn't bemoan anything whatsoever about this country. But that can't be the reality. They were not beyond the human tendency to hold fast to the comfort of familiar things.

Look at how immigrants moved in pockets: they settled together, in places where their language and culture could be supported and survive, where they could pass traditions on to their children. Just look at all the German speaking grandmothers in North Dakota. The Ingas and Arnes of the Red River Valley. Our state paints a portrait of bordered homogeneity. 

Of course they struggled, and they missed their homes with an ache that can't be understood without making the same permanent trip across the sea.  Their grandchildren still steadfastly cling to language and tradition and culture, remembering that they are of another country as well, one that they've never set foot in. This dark haired woman, neither German nor Norwegian, who spent eleven 'magical and charming' days (her words) in her father's country, who was so proud of his poverty and struggle as an immigrant, had sadly missed the irony of her prejudice. 

My mother and I, immigrants both, went upstairs for our coffee, and felt a little sad without really knowing why.

Autumn on the prairie

It’s autumn on the prairie. In the last few weeks, the cottonwoods, elms, maples, have all turned from green to yellow, orange, and red. It’s a short-lived burst of color out here, and the leaves soon drop to the ground, covering every browning lawn in a blanket of gold. Driving through Bismarck takes a little navigational know-how if you want to take full advantage of the season. The old neighborhoods have wide avenues lined with American Elms, their branches arching over the streets and interlacing far above the cars and bicycles, forming a cathedral ceiling for those passing below. Look up and you’ll see blue sky peeking through the gaps, and at the right time, the sun turning each translucent leaf into a tiny pane of stained glass. It’s like Harry Clarke designed it himself. If you take the right route, you can keep going through leafy tunnels much of the way across town.

The ever-present North Dakota wind is doing its part, too, gusting now and then, sending a swirl of leaves skittering over the roads, or prompting a shower of leaves to fall, snowfall-like, over the houses. Children jump into leaf piles, scattering, and parents moan that they’d only just finished raking the whole yard before a new layer fell to the ground.

This has been a dry September, and the leaves, once they've finished rustling in the wind, are satisfyingly crunchy underfoot. A fine dust blows through the air, a product of dry leaves ground into nothingness. The soil is sending up dust, too, and allergies have been predictably rampant.

Fall is the season of the church supper out here. Country churches unfailingly host a community meal, often served on picnic tables in the field outside, with mountains of roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet yellow buns, seventeen different kinds of pie, and coffee that flows unceasingly from huge silver vats manned by elderly women. Bingo and horseshoes serve as entertainment, though be wary of trying to beat any man sporting a cowboy hat – he’ll know his way around a horseshoe throw. There’s almost always a thrift sale with a baked goods counter set up nearby: whatever you do, don’t pass up a slice of eggy, sweet, creamy kuchen, especially if it was made by someone’s grandmother. 

With all the beauty of autumn, there is the knowledge that at the end of these bright, colorful weeks, we will find winter. Winter here is often harsh, frigid, bitter, and by the time we’re in the dark depths of January, seemingly endless. Does anyone look forward to it? Best to enjoy the gorgeous days we have now, with the sun warming the leaves, raising up the smells unknown to any other season.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had the right idea, to approach the chilling of the year with an optimistic note: to remember that if winter comes, spring won’t be far behind. 

610. Ode to the West Wind

I O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,	15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head	20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,	25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers	35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know	40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share	45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed	50
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd	55
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,	60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,	65
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?	70

A big shout out to the publishers of Soundings, as well as Miss Harte and her Leaving Cert English class of 1998. We never covered Yeats in time, so some of us missed out on valuable points, possibly a place in medicine at UCC, but look at us all now - we're fine. Totally fine. 

Into the West

 We left by 9 am and rolled out of town in the orange glow of an autumn morning, heading west. We crossed the Missouri River, passing a flatbed truck piled high with hay bales. The fields on the west side of the river that divides North Dakota in two were the bright gold of early fall. Tall, fat jellyrolls of hay dotted the landscape, topping small hills or set in glacial depressions, like they had become stuck there. The sky above us was blue, blue, blue, except for the little puffs of white cloud here and there. Rolling yellow hills for miles and miles and the hard road in front of us.

We turned off the interstate at Beulah and the road rollercoastered onward. Sunflowers, dry, hanging their black heads in droves along the road, their leaves drooping as though they’d just missed out on something big.

To the left of the road was an old red barn, with white letters that announced ‘The Ideal Farm.’ It certainly looked ideal, tucked into a hillside. A white, broad front porch and a window nested in the eaves – maybe from the 1920s? Trees shaded the yard, their leaves turning from summer green to yellow, and a pond curled around the property, tapering towards a cottonwood. A black bull lay warming itself in the morning sun, lines of muscle visible beneath its skin. Up and then down a sharp hill, we went into Beulah – coal mining country, power plant country, cowboy country.

Main Street Beulah is full of shops, bustling with cars and pedestrians, a sure sign of a town untouched by big box stores or shopping malls. Two cars in a row had dogs that stuck their heads out of windows to woof at passers-by. A sign of the nearby oil boom, once empty lots now hold RVs, an occasional Airstream trailer, sometimes a real honest-to-goodness trailer.

At the Country Kettle restaurant downtown, a help wanted sign sat in the window. Concrete grain silos ten stories high loomed over the road. The train tracks sit behind it, and the trains rumbling through town send vibrations that move right up through your legs and shake the bones in your chest.  Inside the café, the tables were nearly full. A grey-haired man sat in the sunshine with two white-haired people. His t-shirt boasted ‘oil field scum.’ His narrow face was deeply lined and he let out a curse word or two at considerable volume. At the next table, a young woman cradled a sleeping newborn. The waitress left a carafe on my table – the coffee was good and strong. I drank it black and eavesdropped as people leaned across tables to talk.

“How many grandchildren do you have now? Is it fifteen?”

“Well, I sure hurt my hand bowling last week. Look at that finger! It didn't always bend that way.”

“The special today is fleischkeuchle. It’s a steak wrapped in pastry and fried. People around here like it. It’s different.”

“What do you hear from your mom these days?”

“Well, my Vernon, he’s a picky one. He eats toast, French fries, chips… oh, and steak, of course, and ribs…”

After three cups of coffee, a walk around town brought me to flat fronted shops. I wandered around a bit in a dollar store that stocked tomatoes, zucchini and squash, piled on the floor beneath the 99c greeting cards. 

An old car dealership sits crumbling at the end of Main Street, just before the houses start lining the road. A Chevrolet sign is still out front, and concrete parapets on the roof spell out Oldsmobile. Inside, it looks as though dripping water has ruined the roof and ceiling, caused the tiles to drop down onto the showroom floor, where they sit, crumpled from the fall, next to an old maroon sofa and chair. In front of the plate glass window, a dead bird lays on its back, drying in the sun.

The husband’s interview, the reason we came to town, lasted for two hours, and I spent the time walking around Beulah’s dusty streets, over the train tracks, past the new gas station and houses with neatly trimmed lawns. One house looked the way my neighborhood in Bismarck used to – an old bungalow with a huge elm tree arching its branches over the yard, a layer of dust covering the steps, and an old wire fence tracing its way around the property line. Old Dakota style, maybe a hundred years old, and it made me miss the houses that stood where the hospital parking lots are now.

Once we got on the road (after stopping for knoephla soup in a tiny café near the highway), I kept noticing the dust. It went from yellowish brown to scoria red pretty quickly. We rolled past Dickinson and the natural gas flares burning next to the highway. We saw oil rigs nodding on farmland, trucks and semis barreling past, a huge metal sculpture of geese over a sunset. As we aimed westward, the landscape changed from rolling farmland to the cut lines of buttes striped with black lignite coal, bluish gray bentonite, yellow and red scoria.

Why the romance of heading west? Don’t you feel it when you hit the road, heading west from anywhere? Maybe it’s all tied up in old western movies, in the line ‘go west, young man,’ in the idea that the frontier is still out there, dusty and wild and free. I even felt that way whenever heading west in Ireland –to Kerry, Galway, Connemara or Donegal – a surge of excitement in the chest: a feeling that, as the landscape becomes more rugged, so do I.

Badlands, and Medora – dusty. Dust on the car, dust on your legs, dust in your nose. Oh, and there are the cowboys, strolling down the street. Oh, and there’s a rattlesnake, crushed dead on the road by a passing car. We’re in the west.

A surprise in the laundry room...

I found a dead bat in the washing machine the other day.

That’s right, a dead bat. A bit mummified, really, and quite, quite dead.

Earlier in the day, I had been looking around the storage room in the basement in our hundred-year-old house, digging through boxes that had once belonged to my husband’s old roommates, who have all moved on to their own adventures in homeownership. I was looking to see if anything was worth keeping. Something caught my eye that I thought would be good for our pup.

We only recently got a dog – just three weeks ago, actually. She’s a good dog: seems very smart, mostly obedient, though she likes to jump up on unsuspecting people, worryingly, often the elderly. Anyhow, she sleeps in a kennel – if she didn’t, she’d be in bed with my husband and myself, which, as you know, would have us end up squashed together on the far end of the bed while the brazen hound takes up the middle. So, to keep her comfortable in the kennel, we’ve put in an old pillow, a comfy old blanket, a few of her toys in an attempt to make a nice doggy comfort space.

Righteo now, don’t forget about the bat. While digging around in the storage room, I came across a box with old books, childhood knickknacks, and a frayed blue towel, presumably all from ancient roommate times. Looking at the towel I thought to myself, gee, this would be great for the dog to slobber on instead of the couch corner. So I pulled it out, popped it into the washing machine with a few blankets that needed a freshening up, and went on my merry way.

Guess where the bat was?

My suspicion is that it was on the old, raggedy blue towel. Somehow, I didn’t notice it when I pulled it out of the box, or when I put it into the washing machine.

When the wash cycle was finished, I went back down into the basement, folded the dry clothes and started lifting the wet blankets and towels from the washer into the dryer. Something strange was at the bottom of the wash tub – something dark and rumpled, with a few sticky-out bits, like the top of an eggplant looks a few hours after being cut off.

I poked it with my finger.

Squish.

Oh no, I thought: that’s not an eggplant top. Realising that it might be something that once had a pulse, and praying that it hadn't survived the spin cycle, I pulled a clean dusting cloth out of the pile on the dryer and slowly, gingerly even, picked up the rumpled dark thing.

I turned it over, and ah! It had a face! A fuzzy, tiny face with slightly chubby cheeks! Slightly chubby, mummified cheeks.

The dog was standing right behind me, as she always does, little shadow that she is, and was looking up at the thing in my hand, head cocked to one side, ears perked up with interest. I assumed, of course, that she wanted to eat it, being a dog that will eagerly eat horse poo.

I took a slightly closer look at the thing without actually bringing my face closer to it – was it a mouse? No, those arm bones were much too long and papery looking – that was a bat, and it was (eek):

        a) in the house

                      

        b) in the flipping washing machine

Pinching it between my thumb and forefinger as far away from my face as possible, I dropped it into the trash bin along with the used dryer sheets, lint, and the remnants of the ‘I’m single, not desperate’ mug I’d accidently knocked off the counter with a broomstick a few weeks ago. And out with it to the trash can in the alleyway. In went the bleach to the washing tub, along with the now definitely unclean but clean-smelling laundry.

I’ve never found a tiny, creepy animal in my home before – and I’ve had a lot of homes. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. There was the time when a squirrel came in through the skylight of my yurt in Idaho, ran a panicked circle around my roommate’s legs, and beat a path out the door. That was really only for a minute or so. It hadn’t set up residence, and it certainly wasn’t there long enough to become mummified.

Mummified! That brings us back to thought of how it squished a little when I poked it. I think it might’ve become rehydrated in the wash.

Ew.

My sister in law once had a family of skunks set up home beneath her porch in college. That was probably worse than this. Skunks carry rabies, too, and with them comes the danger of them spraying the whole place with their foul odor... and if they’re living under the porch, there’s probably a good chance that they’ll scurry into the house while you’ve got the screen door propped open on moving day. Just imagine that for a second. 

I suppose my dad has caused a few creature-in-the-house near-misses himself. My father has what you might call an affinity for squirrels, a desire to bond with them and develop lasting human-rodent friendships. He loves to feed the neighborhood squirrels, and has even attempted to train them to eat from his hand as he crouches down on the ground nearby. Yes, he's retired. About four years ago, he started laying a trail of unsalted in-the-shell peanuts along the top of the garden fence, with the last peanut set just outside the front door. The result was this: arriving to visit my parents and coming face-to-face with a squirrel, perched on the fence mere inches from my nose, a squirrel now totally unafraid of human contact. One day, while home from his faraway job, my older brother opened the door to find a squirrel, upside down, suspended by its claws from the screen. That was not something that my mother had ever hoped to experience. By the end of that winter, all of the trained squirrels had since died without teaching their offspring to trust the white-haired man on the corner.

Well, no more bats have shown up since the fuzzy cheeked, mummified squashy thing emerged from the washing machine three days ago. By now it can be filed under ‘just another horrible story to tell in the pub.' 

Hopefully.

Buen Camino

Right, we were going to talk about the Camino de Santiago, since we already talked about the cake. It's a gorgeous autumn morning, the sun is shining, and now is our chance, so let's take it.

The Camino, as people who've walked it call it, is an ancient hiking trail that runs about 720 miles or 900 kilometers across Spain, if you go all the way to Finnesterre, or the End of the Earth. Yes, that's what the Romans called it, the End of the Earth.

 If you don't do the extra bit at the end, it works out to be around 560 miles. Now, whichever you choose, that's a pretty long way if you've never walked further than the safe, paved distance between your car and the front door of work. The long version, of 720 miles, is in North Dakota terms, like going from Bismarck to Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is, as our friends and neighbors would say, a ways. And you're walking, unless of course you're one of the minority group who choose to ride horseback or bicycle. Let's be honest, though: unless you're willing to wear an all-spandex outfit in 90 degree weather (oh dear, oh dear, the chafing), or to get Mr Ed his own plane ticket, you're most likely going to walk it.

Imagine that for a moment: stepping out of your front door in B-town, NoDak, with a light pack on your back, shoes on your feet (preferably ones that won't ever cause blisters) and walking out across the prairie, past the bustling, booming oil country, turning left somewhere south of Billings, and making your way, all day every day, to Cheyenne. Walking for ten hours a day, napping in parks after lunch, eating six or seven meals to keep the energy going, and falling into bed every night. When you think of it that way, the distance becomes clear. Mind-boggling, almost. Or maybe you'd rather not think about it at all.

But thousands upon thousands of people think about it, and then do it every year. It's a pilgrimage trail that has existed since Roman times, which means that millions of people have done it. You may well ask: in God's name, why?

Well, that's exactly the point. Most have done it in God's name. The city of Santiago de Compostela is named after St James, aka Sant Iago, one of the twelve apostles of Christ.  As the story goes, St James the apostle was martyred in the middle east. His followers placed his body in a stone boat and set it off to sea. The stone boat eventually washed up on the shores of Galicia, where it was found by shepherds, and brought to the site where the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela now stands. It is widely assumed to be his burial place, and so, starting in medieval times (and indeed, in Roman times) people often times made the journey as a pilgrimage in penance for crimes or sins. Actually, if you're doing the hike with blisters on your feet, you very well may think that you're doing penance for some past wrong yourself. But don't let that idea dissuade you just yet.

Now, why the name Compostela? Pilgrims often escaped the brutal Spanish heat by walking at night, and according to camino lore, they made their way to Santiago by following the milky way, or the field of stars. In fact, while walking the camino at night, if you look up, the milky way seems to stretch straight out from where you've been, to where you're going. Santiago de Compostela = St James of the Field of Stars. Beautiful.

Spain is dry, hot and dusty in the summertime, remarkably so, when you compare it to the lush, humid French side of the Pyrenees; but it is made of spectacular stuff. From the start of the Camino, way up in the Pyrenees mountains, which divide France and Spain, peregrinos (as the pilgrims are called) cross through the vineyards of Rioja, the wooded mountains of Cantabrica, winding through thousand-year-old cities like Leon and Burgos, through tiny towns with names like Villaviciosa and Carrion de los Condes, crossing mile after mile of trail before finally ending in Galicia, on the northern Atlantic edge of the Iberian peninsula.

It takes roughly a month to traverse the whole of Spain on the most popular route, the Camino Frances. Modern pilgrims have their own reasons for checking out of their day-to-day life and following the trail: some for sport, some for religious or spiritual reasons, some to get over a heartbreak or to grieve. And some, of course, just because they've always wanted to.  For many, it is a life-changing month: a time of daily reflection, of meditation, and of the purest simplicity.

Some of the more memorable points include a wine fountain, where pilgrims can drink wine for free (!) from a tap coming out of a vineyard's wine cellar wall. People often carry a small stone in their pack to leave at the Cruz de Ferro, covered in mementos, ribbons, photographs, and yes, stones. Worth an overnight stop is the pilgrim hostel at Manjarin, run by Tomas and the modern Knights Templar (or so they claim to be), who will feed you, put you up in a barn, and perform a blessing ceremony after dinner in tunics... with swords! You won't forget that anytime soon, nor will you forget picking up a scallop shell on the beach at Finesterre, proof that you made the journey in its entirety.

Of course, the most memorable things are the feeling of comradarie amongst pilgrims: of sleeping in giant rooms stacked with bunkbeds; of shared meals along the side of the road; of greeting familiar faces at different points along your journey; of making new and sometimes lifelong friends from the other side of the world. It's like a big, migrating United Nations summer camp for grown-ups and the occasional donkey.

Does this even begin to encapsulate the camino? It doesn't. As LaVar Burton would say, you don't have to take my word for it. Sure, have a look yourself. You should probably give it a shot sometime.

Buen Camino.

The flop of shame

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store in sweatpants. Not just any sweatpants, but the stretchy, black workout leggings that everyone is wearing these days. 

This wasn't the first time I've worn them out in public, but I don't make a habit of it. Every time I do, however, there always seems to be a reminder waiting. Some invisible mirror being held up, perhaps by a complete stranger, showing me that I used to be different from how I am now, no matter how subtly.

I found my reminder easily enough, rounding the corner of the cereal aisle: two young women, standing in beautiful linen summer dresses, reading aloud the sign hanging overhead labelled 'jam, peanut butter, pickles.' They had Scandinavian accents. Foreign women, looking like real grownups in public.

A mother in jogging shorts flip flopped by with a young child, also in jogging shorts and flip flops. Flop flop flop flop flop flop.

Standing there in my stretchy black leggings, my Irish self inwardly frowned at my American self, remembering Fiona, the Boston girl from my undergraduate English tutorial group in Dublin. Fiona, who would appear for small group discussions in sweatpants with words printed across the backside, a hoodie, flip flops, and a huge bun leaning over the side of her head. Pajamas, essentially. She'd fold herself up, legs under her in her hard backed chair, like she was watching a movie in her living room, instead of discussing literature at the same university that James freaking Joyce had attended. She would drawl out her words in a half sing-song as she offered her analysis on the week's novel.

"I don't knoooow, you guuuuuuys, IIIIIIII just thought this book was kind of boring?"

Oh for feck's sake, Fiona.

That was not how things were done, and her extravagantly casual way embarrassed the bejaysus out of my American self. To be honest, I worried that my classmates would equate me with this groggy creature swathed in comfy fabrics and shod in plastic.

And then, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, there I was, standing in a prairie grocery store aisle in flip flops, stretchy sweats and a tee shirt, with a big messy bun perched on my head.

sigh.

Oh well. I pulled up my elastic waistband, casually flip flopped past the Scandinavian girls, and made my way to the checkout counter. 

Bob Dylan in Fargo

Last night, Bob Dylan played in the Fargo Civic Center. The place was jammers, filled with people of every age, and the general excitement was showing on the faces gathered before the stage. A common question throughout the crowd was 'have you seen him before?' Most said yes. One particularly enthusiastic fellow claims an amazing twenty three Dylan shows, and had just come back from three shows, in a row, in different states. Now, that's a fan.

The lights dimmed and out came the band, and the man himself. All dressed in black, hair slicked back, facial hair carved into dark shapes, crowd roaring in front of them, they looked like magicians from vaudeville, a cross between bluesmen and gypsies. The stage lights up front threw their shadows onto the back wall, a hovering, jolting crowd of menacing figures in broad-rimmed hats. Pure, old-fashioned stagecraft.

Dylan himself, bare-headed, opened his throat to let out a voice so gravelly, you'd swear he was gargling stones. Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat, Girl From the North Country, Things Have Changed, Tangled Up In Blue. The band worked tightly, musicians giving one another the nod when moving into solos, always keeping an eye on Bob. Dylan himself moved back and forth across the stage, from guitar to piano to harmonica, seeming to decide at the moment what instrument he'd play next. His vocal delivery smoothed out over the course of the concert, and he smiled into the microphone as the lyrics came.

A couple, easily in their 70s, danced the night away, and danced their way out of the auditorium at the end of the concert. A couple of teenagers nearby did the same.

After the show, standing on the lawn, you could watch everyone come streaming out of the doors, and look over the faces of people who'd seen a living legend up close. Some singing,, some drunk, some tired... all smiling.

In praise of the farmer's market

On a Saturday, one of the best places to be in any town is at the farmer's market.

Fresh corn spilling out from a truck bed; bags and bags of cucumbers ready to be brought home and drowned in vinegar and spice; tender zucchini, yellow and green; shallots folded in their papery skins.

Today in Bismarck, vendors were bundled up against the wind and momentary cloudbursts. Market umbrellas were gripped tightly, threatening to turn their holders into a prairie version of Mary Poppins, and some came very close to blowing right across the tables. Coffee and talk were flowing as locals hunted down the summer's garden treasures.

There is such a short window of time on the northern plains when people can grow vegetables, little more than three months, sometimes less, so everyone knows to make the most of it. A truck bed mounded full corn is emptied in two hours; tomatoes (if they're ready) disappear into shopping bags as the buyer gasps their delight with finding them at all so early in the season. People talk of canning, and the taste of homegrown fruits in the middle of a January deep-freeze.

The question, 'what do you do with that?' passes between everyone's lips: kitchen conspirators, all.