FROM FAIRIES TO GIANTS—THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY
Much of Irelands history is veiled in folklore. It makes for some interesting stories to hear as we wind through the scenery. Helen, my latest "Tir Na Nog" tour leader, has a wonderful way of weaving the myths into more scientific explanations. She tells rich stories of Fairy bridges and Giant's walls that segue into scientific explanations of how the geological formations formed these basalt limestone caves...I prefer the former style of explanation! Today, I'm going to see the Giant's Causeway, a spectacular set of cliffs leading down a long path to the sea and down to a huge series of large, stacking hexagonal rock tubes that fit together like six-sided smoke stacks. With various heights and widths, but most form fitting--they are like natures own huge honeycomb! Formed over 60 million years ago, by lava cooling, now preserve the rocks into these shapes that remain today. I'm hanging with a group of Aussies, 4 of them enjoying their "gap" year between secondary school and university. All very sweet and asking me questions about my times in the music business...did I ever meet "so and so..."? (Most of the stars they are curious about weren't even out of diapers in my hey day...but they don't treat me any differently for it). I've decided to stay in this area for the next two days, in Ballintoy, at a lovely family owned hostel known as "Sheep Island View". The owners, Josie and Seamus McShane, are delightful parents of 8, most of them grown (two live in Chicago). Beyond a loud boy scout group staying the first night, it's been a wonderful reprieve from being on the go, and out here in the vast, wild Ireland I can walk for miles and miles. It feels good to get a thigh burn going after sitting in a bus for hours. I feel alive and refreshed and attend a church service on Sunday, being greeted by almost each parishioner on the way out, with a hearty brogue "Good morning, dear". This is the beautiful Northern Irish coast, as spectacular as Maui’s Hana is, albeit colder. Sheep brave the weather but eye me shyly as I greet them. Off in the distance beyond the coast, is Rathlin Island, who’s most recent famous visitor was Richard Branson. His hot-air balloon crashed into the sea off Rathlin in 1987 after its record-breaking cross Atlantic flight from Maine. Coincidentally Maine was the destination of the majority of Islanders who migrated in the 1840's. Branson and Per Lindstrom were rescued from the sea a few miles northwest of Bull Point where they were taken to safety. Richard Branson later returned to Rathlin and presented the Rathlin Island Trust with £25,000 towards the renovation of the Manor House. Rathlin is also the place where Guglielmo Marconi was contracted by Lloyd's Insurers to install a wireless link which would allow swift announcements of successful trans-Atlantic crossings by Lloyd's ships. On July 6th, 1898 Marconi and his associates successfully transmitted the first commercial radio signals across water from Rathlin's East Lighthouse to Ballycastle on the Northern Irish mainland, opening up the communications world which continues to develop at a rapid pace today. Even out here far from the bustling city streets, you’re never too far from technology. But for now, I’m apart from modern life and at one with the sheep. Once I get back on the bus, it'll be a whole 'nother world, so I soak up the scenery and the serenity. It's cities from here on out...just Belfast for two days and then back to Dublin I go, to complete my full circle tour of the Emerald Isle. Soon enough, I'll be back on Maui, letting go of my layers but holding tight to these cherished memories I'm making.