Lying Low in the Fields of Athenry
Looking at the fields by Athenry today I was thinking. It’s a space issue. Irish landscapes have so little space to work with that you have to step into them to look at them. The American landscapes near where I live let you look at the view from the outside.
I love driving across Kansas and Nebraska. I don’t mean the Flint Hills where everybody loves, or the southeastern corner of either state, I mean the middle and the west. Landscapes have edges. Wild grasses and flowers have been planted at the sides of the road. Fields end, and have several layers of an edge.
So yesterday I’m looking at an Irish landscape - me being on my holidays and all - and it feels so much more real than the landscapes of the Midwest I left recently. The sun is blasting soft evening light. The sky is mostly blue, except for some white fluffy clouds and some dark grey clouds of rain. The nettles have little long dark shadows beside them. A rainbow illuminates a far field. Distant hills are a darker duller green than near grass.
It’s an unremarkable scene. But why is it different? I ask myself.
Because it has no edge. I am outside the field, on the road, yet inside the view. There is no edge of the field. I see no stone wall, no weeds, no gravel. It is as if I am in the middle of the field. It’s as if I reach out I can touch a sheep. Just to be safe I don’t reach out.
Once upon a time a farmer in Kerry chased me and four friends for miles - and I mean literally miles - because when we came down Carrauntouhil (Ireland’s highest mountain) he thought we were messing with his sheep. We weren’t, but by the time we were reunited with the rest of our group, the farmer with the stick had caused us to take a ten mile detour. It was a big stick.
So even when a scene creates the feeling of you being in the middle of it, you make sure it doesn’t create the feeling that you are anywhere near anybody’s sheep not your own.
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Lovely comment and quite profound.