The Way Home

by Mark Boyle

  Reading Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, I become aware of how our conception of time, and what a day is, belongs to a place as much as the physical life which more obviously comprises it. For the life of an Eskimo in the Arctic, ‘The idea that the “sun rises in the east and sets in the west” simply does not apply,’ and I come to understand that the ‘thought that a “day” consists of a morning and a forenoon, afternoon and an evening, is a convention, one so imbedded in us that we hardly think about it’. If I stood at the North Pole on summer solstice, I would see the sun make a ‘flat 360º orbit exactly 23.5º above the horizon’. Lopez adds:

  In the Temperate Zone, periods of twilight are a daily phenomenon, morning and evening. In the Far North they are (also) a seasonal phenomenon, continuous through a day, day after day, as the sun wanes in the fall and waxes in the spring. In the Temperate Zone each day is noticeably shorter in winter and longer in summer but, still, each day has a discernible dawn, a protracted ‘first light’ that suggests new beginnings. In the Far North the day does not start over again every day.

  With my way of life, preparation is critical. Just as November is not the time to be getting your winter’s wood in, I start thinking of darkness in June. With that in mind, I go out to the potato field to cut rush. Its pith, which has all the properties needed for an effective candle wick, will help enlighten my winter, and it doesn’t levy a standing charge for standing in the field in June.

  ~

  We dug out a pond with spades when we first got here. It took two long days immersed in mud up to our arses, our wellies absolutely submerged and utterly pointless. We may as well have gone in wearing slippers. The idea was to create a habitat for a range of species that would be beneficial to our vegetable gardens and potato field, and the landscape as a whole.

  Looking at the frogspawn next to the bank now, I’m reminded of how simple it is to bring life back to a place. It seems that all we really need to do is provide a habitat that is protected from our machines and our need to control, give it a little time, and nature – often mysteriously – does the rest.

  I’m struck by how calm and at peace with things the pond is today. There’s a steady trickle of fresh water coming in from the west, heading out towards the east. Perfect. If no new water at all were to flow into the pond, it wouldn’t take long for it to become stagnant. Too much water too quickly and its stability can become overwhelmed, eventually filling up with the silt that was washed away upstream.

  My only job then, as pond steward, is to make sure I keep the balance right.

  Summer

  Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

  D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

  Today is the longest day of the year. Summer solstice. When I lived in the city, working the 7–6, each day felt as long as the next. Electric light, alarm clocks and closing hours standardised my experience of the seasons. At the heart of modern society lies not just capital, fossil fuels and ambition, but Greenwich Mean Time – which, in Pip Pip, Jay Griffiths calls the meanest time of all.

  I awake, not knowing what time it is. This has become normal. As the soft, red morning light drifts in through the open window above my head, I find myself not caring what time it is, either. A privileged position to be in, it could be said, but while I thank the gods most days, as a couple we live on a fraction of what is considered to be the poverty line for a single person here in Ireland, and without electricity or running water. So not most people’s idea of privilege.

  Whatever time it is, it must be early. As I slowly come around I feel refreshed, and it feels good, natural, life-affirming to wake up with the light. I was in bed by last light last night, and so considering we get about six hours of darkness at this time of year, that’s good sleep for me. In fact, it’s longer than when I used blackout blinds. The quality of rest feels better, too.

  Six months ago, such an outcome would have seemed a minor miracle. Now I’ve started to take a good night’s sleep for granted. I don’t like taking things for granted.

  ~

  There are seven heaps in our compost bay, and six of them are full. When I say full, I mean half-full, as at this time of year they’ve shrunk from the full pallet height to the midway mark. That’s good, as it means the elements and thermophilic bacteria are doing their job. But it also means that my first job this morning is to turn two heaps over into one, for a couple of reasons. One is to make space. The other is to reintroduce air into it, and thus aid decomposition. Most gardeners and smallholders don’t bother turning it, and it’s not essential, but I find that it’s worth the effort.

  As we use a ‘humanure’ system here, which incorporates human piss and shit into the mix, there’s a part of everyone who lives here, and a few of the visitors, in the heaps in front of me. Most people, having never done it, find the thought of turning this kind of compost disgusting, but that’s just one way of looking at it. In it I see stories and memories and history, and a great link between a place and its people. All I am really doing is making soil, and that seems to me as good a way to start the day as any. And in doing so I’m continually reminded that the boundaries between us and the land which nourishes us are nowhere near as clear as we might like to imagine.

  ~

  A friend, who had travelled the Indian subcontinent for six months, tells me about a small village-worth of women, old and young, whom he once met on the banks of a river in remotest Pakistan. They were washing clothes together. Not having a shared language, he didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, yet was struck by how much they appeared to be enjoying themselves – laughing, talking incessantly, being playful – doing something, he said, he would hate to have to do himself.

  My own past experience of clothes washing bore no resemblance to such a scene. In an individualising, atomising Ireland, my own experience of everything bore no resemblance to such a scene. For most of my life, washing clothes meant loading up a drum, turning a dial, hitting a button, and going off and doing something else. But having given up on all things automatic seven months ago, this had to change. If I’d never seen a washing machine before, or had grown up in a remote region of Pakistan, hand-washing my own clothes would simply be an essential fact of life that was entirely unworthy of mention. But I have seen a washing machine, I know exactly how quick and efficient they are, and I was brought up by a generation who were only too keen to swap the hardship of hand-washing for the flick of a switch. So I accept that I’m probably never going to enjoy it, especially as long as it remains a lonely, isolated process far removed from any social ritual.

  With this in mind, I’ve become frugal with my clothes usage of late. At this time of year I spend a lot of my time in shorts. I find that wearing too many clothes in summer can soften you up too much for the harder months of winter. So the wash basket tends to fill up only once a month.

  Clothes washing morning, first light. I gather some dry twigs and get the rocket stove fired up. On top of it I rest an old, blackened pot which I fill to the brim with spring water and chopped-up soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), a perennial plant we grow on our smallholding. Soapwort contains saponins, and works just as well on your body and hair as it does on your clothes. Historically its use was conventional, and you can still find it growing wild around the sites of old Roman baths.

  I heat up the pot until the water inside is very warm, taking care not to allow it to boil, as that would kill the active ingredient in the plant. The time taken to make it probably doesn’t compare favourably with the fluorescent green stuff you can buy at the supermarket, but getting the best financial value for each moment in my life hasn’t been my primary motive for a long time.

&nb
sp; Next I soak the clothes in cold water in the washing basin, while I pour the pot of soapwort liquid into a small hand-crank tumbler. I wring out the cold water, put the clothes into the tumbler, and spin it around by hand for about ten minutes. As I do so, I ponder how much harder this would be for a family of six, and appreciate why working parents love their washing machines today. At the same time, I can appreciate why such a modern perspective is part of a much bigger economic, cultural and ecological problem.

  Once the spinning is done, the clothes go back into the basin where they are first scrubbed, and then rinsed and rinsed, until the water remains clear. From there they go through the mangle and, at this time of year, onto the line in the garden (in winter they would be hung on the drying rack, which Kirsty made from hazel rods, above the range in the cabin). The whole process takes most of the morning, and by the time it’s done I’m glad it’s over for another month.

  As I’m putting the mangle away, my mind wanders back to Pakistan, and I contemplate what I and my progressive culture are losing in our ‘progressing’. I’m reminded of an experience of my own, somewhere I can’t quite place on the island of Java, in the Indonesian archipelago. I was with two friends, Gavin and Nigel – both of whom kept themselves in good shape – hiking up a steep mountain during a summer spent exploring the country. After a few hundred metres of sharp incline in blistering heat, we stopped for a quick breather. As we were standing there, taking in the view and preparing ourselves for the next part of the climb, a young girl – who looked about seven or eight years old – walked up behind us with a full bucket of water hanging off each arm. She smiled at us, and said hello. We looked sheepishly at each other, and followed her up. We thought about asking if we could carry them for her, but she didn’t seem the slightest bit put out by the buckets and, quite frankly, she looked more capable than any of us.

  A few hundred metres further on we reached a small cluster of huts, where a handful of men and women were washing their clothes. Funnily enough, at the time I remember thinking how primitive their lifestyles were. Now I wish I could go back and learn from them.

  ~

  Aside from my own experience, most of what I know about pike fishing I’ve gleaned from Maureen, the owner of the nearest fishing tackle shop 20 kilometres away in Portumna. I remember the first time I went in there, looking for what was, in hindsight, an unnecessary bit of kit, and being talked out of buying it by her. If you’re really enjoying fishing in three months’ time, she said, come back and I’ll sort you out then. She was right. I ended up not wanting or needing it, though not for a lack of interest in fishing.

  I pop in to say hello. She tells me that she’s struggling to survive, though she shows no sign of relenting. Online stores, with their warehouses in industrial estates, often in cheaper countries, are killing places like hers, she says. It’s not a surprise. I have never seen a single website that has talked anyone out of buying anything it sells. And it’s hardly for the want of unnecessary stuff on the internet.

  ~

  I’ve got to be up early in the morning. I usually am anyway, but this time I have to be somewhere important. Somewhere civilised. I have no alarm clock, so I need to trust myself which, after a lifetime of putting my faith in our contemporary religion, Technology, is not as easy as it ought to be. But I do it anyway.

  I wake up. It’s early. The people I meet, for whom I’m in good time, tell me it was my body clock, but I’m not a machine made of cogs and springs. I’m an animal, made of feelings and failings, hopes and flaws, instincts and intuitions. I don’t know what explanation the priests – The Scientists – of this new religion would give but it wasn’t the clicking of some Cartesian gear which awoke me. No, I prefer to think of it as a knowing beyond knowing.

  ~

  Many years ago, as we walked into the woods on the first morning of a bushcraft course, our teacher – my friend Malcolm Handoll – asked us all if we could take off our boots and wellies, and continue barefoot instead. Wide-eyed and tentative, we looked at him and each other – really? – as one of our small group asked Malcolm why. After all, it was the middle of November.

  Malcolm’s response has stuck with me ever since. He told us to ‘imagine a life wearing boxing gloves on your hands. That is how my feet feel in wellies.’ As we unlaced our boots and reluctantly pulled off our wellies, he implored us to think about how it might feel not to be able to touch anything, ever, with our naked hands because they were always protected by a pair of thick, rigid gloves. I told him I had never looked at it that way before. Okay, he said, leave your boots there and come follow me.

  Being a frosty late autumn morning, my first concern was that my feet would get so cold I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the course. At first they did, but as soon as we got moving I was surprised to find them warming up. I could feel the blood flowing, and the nerves in my feet tingled, as if they were keen to explore. It felt like a foot massage and reflexology session rolled into one and, for the first time in my memory, they felt alive and connected to the great living, breathing, wild beast below them.

  My second concern was that my feet were going to get injured, but that never happened either. I found myself paying careful attention to every footstep, stepping over jagged stones and thorny plants, and noticing things I suspect I would otherwise have missed. I walked more sensitively, more consciously, not just trampling over things with the disregard that a common technology such as boots allows. All of a sudden I found myself alert to every crunch and crack and texture under my soles, for no other reason than because I had to. This wasn’t connection with the earth for spiritual reasons, this was connection with the earth for physical, practical purposes. Or, who knows, maybe it was both.

  When the course was finished I put my boots back on, and kept them on until now. Samuel Beckett was right. ‘Habit is a great deadener.’

  The air last night was fresh and crisp, the sky utterly cloudless, the kind that punctuates two perfectly blue-skied summer days. The sun has only just snuck up over the eastern horizon, where it looks like an ember left over from last night’s campfire. My first job of the day is to water the plants. On my way out the door I catch myself, take off my boots and socks, and leave the house barefoot for the first time since I last saw Malcolm.

  Instantly I feel the soft dew awaken the insides of my toes. They’re cold to begin with, no doubt; it’s not long ago they were under a blanket. But just as your body reacts to plunging into a lake on a summer’s evening, they soon acclimatise to the new conditions. As I walk towards the potting shed I notice new plantain leaves coming through the grass, and droplets of dew on spider webs (how many thousands of spider webs have I mindlessly demolished before?). Just as my mind wanders to the day ahead, as it has a tendency to do, I snag my toe on a sharp, protruding rock. It hurts, and with the pain comes an important lesson in mindfulness.

  Coming onto the bóithrín, as I go to collect water from the spring, I see that my eyes are fixed on the road, and not the wildlife around me. I feel every bit of gravel and stone, my soft feet wincing with every second or third step. They need to harden up. They’re certainly not loving it, but it feels fine nonetheless. My feet seem to know their way onto the strip of green grass up the middle of the road, and the world around me feels gentle and alive and breathing again.

  As I turn the corner towards the spring, I find myself hoping that Kathleen is not up and about yet, for if she sees me coming in bare feet at this hour of the morning she’ll think I’ve finally gone mad.

  ~

  Kirsty is struggling. She has a natural love for the natural world – or at least a kind of hatred of what we are doing to it in the name of ‘progress’ – but it is still, in some small part, an intellectual love, one that hasn’t fully percolated down to the marrow of her bones yet. Such things, for our disjointed generation, take time. A lot of time. She understands the ecological imperative – and thus the social imperative – of radically changing the way we relate to all that live
s, perhaps more than anyone else I’ve ever met. She feels it too. Too much sometimes. But what she truly loves is dancing. And what she loves more than dancing is dancing to live music. You should see her.

  She’s a sociable creature – aren’t most of us to some degree? – and so I know she feels a sense of isolation out here at times. It’s a close-knit community of people, but the young have followed those who jumped ship before them to the cities, and so it lacks that youthful spirit that every place needs to thrive. We’re trying to bring it back to this place, but it’s a long and sometimes lonely road. Having no car, and public transport in rural Ireland being what it is, it’s not easy for us to get to the places that are culture rich, nature poor.

  Today I find her quite upset and alone. It breaks my heart to see, partially because I love her like nothing else in the world, even if I’m not always aware enough to show it, and partially because I know the feeling myself. This can seem like a hard way of life until that love for all of life – and not just human society – trickles down from the head and into the veins and bones. It being natural, our need for loving human companionship never leaves us, nor does our longing for a sense of belonging. It has taken me over ten years to feel, as Wendell Berry once wrote, ‘the peace of wild things’, and even at that I have many moments when I miss what I once knew well. She’s not had that time yet. And being naturally nomadic – perhaps we all are, as is seen in the modern trend to fly all over the world, to explore one thing or escape another, that has become a toxic substitute for real journeying – it crosses my mind that maybe this rooted life will never be for her, and we will have to find a way of weaving the adventure of nomadic life into it.

  Not knowing what else to do, I hug her. I tell her to put on her favourite dress, to grab her hula-hoops and tap shoes (she’s becoming an accomplished sean-nós dancer) and that we’re going to find some music. She has been gently asking me to relearn the tin whistle for over a year now, so that we could play and practise together in the evenings, but I’ve made one excuse or another and now I feel a bit ashamed.