The Way Home

by Mark Boyle

  Caroline, it seems, is not merely drawing and painting landscapes. The art is itself a part of the landscape.

  By the time she leaves, the children are painting like it’s 1099, and most of the parents feel like a whole new world has opened up to them. There’s only one problem, from my perspective: despite all of this greater understanding, I still can’t draw.

  ~

  My neighbour Kathleen asks me, Kirsty and Brian (who lives in the farmhouse) for a hand bringing in the wood. She has two huge piles, the result of an order from the local council which told her that some of the trees in her small woods were a safety risk to drivers. It only takes us an hour to stack them under cover. As always, she tries to give us money when we’re done. A tussle ensues, and eventually we accept a few vegetables from her garden, along with lunch with her and her husband. Packie once told me that, when he was growing up, everyone ‘put down the vegetables’. Of that generation, Kathleen is now the last person around here with a vegetable patch.

  Over lunch she tells us that she has just been to London to visit her sister. She goes there once a year. Her husband Jack tells us he has been to England once, and Dublin and Galway a few times too. Kathleen’s sister left when she was young because, as Jack said, there were no jobs here, and by that stage jobs had become part of the Irish psyche. Until then, ‘work’ and ‘a job’ were two very different propositions.

  On her way back from Dublin this time, she lost her passport. She tells us that she has tried to get a new one since, but that when she phones the passport department to sort it out she can’t manage to speak to anyone; it just asks her to press #3 for this or #4 for that, before finally instructing her to visit ‘w w something-or-other’, but she ‘hasn’t got a clue about any of that craic’. While she’s in the mood she says that she’s seen shops in London where you check out your own shopping. Looking disturbed, she says, ‘But sure you can’t chat to a machine, can you?’ Actually, you can now, I think to myself, but I say nothing as I’m not convinced that a vision of AI cashiers will make her feel any better.

  ~

  November is not such a busy time in the garden, but there are still some jobs that need doing.

  First up today is a box of garlic cloves that need planting, which we saved from our previous crop. Garlic gives better interest rates than any bank I’ve ever known. Bank a clove, and you reap a whole bulb. A six hundred per cent return, sometimes. I find it’s a sound investment, and one less subject to the vagaries of events in London or Tokyo. The dividend will come in around July, some of which will be reinvested.

  The beds need preparation, so that the impending heavy frosts of January and February can start to break things down. Conventional growing wisdom advises people to dig and turn the soil over, but we take a no-dig approach to gardening wherever possible. We haul wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of manure and compost onto the raised beds all day. This way the delicate web of life in the soil is left undisturbed, leaving the earthworms to do the hard work for us between now and spring equinox.

  There’s some old fencing that needs to come down. I’m always happy to take down a fence. I know well their use in terms of enclosing animals, and I erect them where absolutely necessary myself, but I’ve yet to look at a natural landscape and feel it would be improved by a fence.

  ~

  I can’t remember the last day I’ve had completely off. In this way of life, a ‘duvet day’ could come close to killing you. There’s none of the convenience of taps to turn, buttons to press, automated central heating timers to set, cafés to pop into or switches to allow you to put your feet up for the whole day. There is always something. Always.

  The flip side to this is that, most days, I feel absolutely alive.

  ~

  I’ve had a shaved head – a number one – for most of my adult life. I used to shave it myself, once every week or two, with an electric razor, and I remember having always felt sharper, neater, more efficient – more ‘on it’ – for a few days after each shave.

  A few months before I unplugged, I found a 1960s set of manual hair clippers in an antiques shop, the kind sold for use on horses today. The owner of the store, which is a great source of obsolete, inexpensive, quality hand tools, told me that they work just as well as the modern electrical version, except that they are a little slower and that it’s more difficult to do the back of the head by yourself. I’ve yet to find out, as they’ve been sitting in a drawer ever since.

  Twelve months later I now have a full head of hair and a beard. I’ve found it a peculiar experience, touching on something more profound within me that I hadn’t anticipated. I tend not to look in mirrors – horrible, self-analysing, vanity-inducing little things – but on the rare occasion I catch myself in something reflective it can feel strange to see the person looking back, like I don’t fully recognise him yet. Neither do old friends who haven’t seen me for a while. One suggests that my new haircut fits the lifestyle I’m living better – the image of the savage, wild, uncivilised man we have in our minds – and while there might be some natural reasons for that, I certainly don’t want to start branding myself.

  Why have I not used those manual clippers? I’m not sure. I’ve thought about it a few times. Maybe a part of me is wanting to let go of an old sense of self – that sharp, neat, efficient guy who was more at home in the city. Or maybe I’ve stopped shaving for the same reason I no longer want to scythe every square inch of the land. Or, maybe, I’m finally learning that none of this stuff is important, anyway.

  ~

  Journalists and visitors often ask me some variant of the question: what do you think will be the most important skill of the future?

  I don’t know, I tell them. If the futurist Ray Kurzweil and his buddies at Google are right, it may be robotics engineering. If, on the other hand, the climate scientists and ecologists (or those rare economists who understand ecology) are right, it could be any of the things that the great mass of people can no longer remember how to do.

  The techno-utopians are putting all their eggs in the AI basket, but no matter what the future holds I know the kind of life I want to lead. Give me natural intelligence over artificial intelligence any day.

  ~

  Before moving back to Ireland, I lived on an organic farm among the rolling hills between Bristol and Bath in England. Johnny Depp was said to be living around there too, but Johnny Depp is said to be living everywhere. Good for house prices.

  On the surface, the cultures of Ireland and England are similar, and are becoming more homogenised, as is the way with globalisation. But underneath the superficial layers of their identikit cities and large towns there are still distinctions, and these, I find, become more pronounced as you move out towards the small villages and parishes of the countryside.

  Having spent considerable time in both countries, I’ve noticed many differences between rural England and rural Ireland. Some of these differences are blatant, the most obvious being house and land prices, and their effect on the rurality of both countries (Ireland’s countryside being largely populated with small-scale farmers, England’s with agribusinesses and commuters). With Ireland’s city-educated twentysomethings flocking to the urban centres, each following the other in pursuit of careers, excitement and bigger money, the cost of putting down roots in rural Ireland is a fraction of that in the English countryside. At a time when the UN is declaring that the internet is a basic human right, the most basic right of all – to build a simple shelter where you can feed yourself and your family – seems to be drifting further out of reach than ever there. And pretty much everywhere.

  But I also noticed more subtle differences. The English work less human-scale farms, create better hedges, don’t chop down all their trees, and generally don’t sit at the bar in pubs. But the differences run deeper too, into the very make-up of our psyche. One of the first questions people in rural Ireland usually ask, when meeting you for the first time, is ‘Where are you from?’ In rural England,
the people you meet are more likely to ask ‘What do you do for a living?’ I have always found that an awkward, unattractive question, even during those days when I was living what might be considered a more conventionally successful life.

  At a talk I was giving a few days ago, about my life without technology, the host introduced me as ‘a writer’. I didn’t correct him at the time, as I didn’t want to make a fuss. Yet I felt uncomfortable about it. I had never set out to be a writer, and still don’t consider myself one, at least no more so than I am a woodsman, grower, fisherman, forager or any of the hundred other things which get me from one end of the year to the next. At most, writing is a by-product of my actual livelihood, and something I do for reasons other than putting food in our stomachs. But I suppose ‘writer’ sounds better, more creditable, more intellectual, especially as one is about to give a talk.

  In a world where those who do the least amount of work (the shareholders of multinational booksellers) make more money per book than those who do the majority of it (the writers), I’ve certainly found the axe to be mightier than the pen.

  ~

  For all of my working life, diaries have organised the minutes and hours of my days. They have ensured I hit deadlines, sent emails or met friends on time, scheduled meetings, paid bills, got on trains, done to-dos and a thousand other small, indispensable things.

  I haven’t looked at my diary now for two months. My work is in front of my eyes, though some days I would rather it weren’t.

  I still can’t decide whether I’m losing touch with reality, or finally finding it.

  ~

  After coming back from a sabbatical to New Zealand in 2006, I decided never to fly again. The decision to stop flying wasn’t easy. I had enjoyed travelling, and looking down on human civilisation and expansive landscapes from another perspective. I won’t go into the reasons why I stopped flying; by now we all know them only too well, and yet we fly more than ever. Business executives attend important meetings in Dubai, tourists spend weekends in Amsterdam and Berlin, hippies do spiritual retreats in India, while environmentalists hold international conferences in close proximity to international airports. It’s just what my generation does. We expect it, and it is expected of us.

  For six months I’ve known that I have to go to Norfolk, in the east of England. I have three reasons: a birthday party, a fortieth anniversary, and to spend time with Kirsty’s family, who have lived there all their lives. All of these things feel as important as my reasons for rejecting technology; but important things can often come into conflict. My options for getting to Norfolk are limited. Sailing isn’t yet one, and so from this position onwards the inevitable compromise is merely a matter of degrees.

  We board the ferry at 2 a.m., hoping to get a few hours’ sleep on one of the sofas in the lounge. We’ll be lucky, as there’s a group of students on the piss and the alpha-male is loud. We’re eleven hours into a twenty-six hour journey, one that is forty-five minutes by air. People fly from Ireland to Australia quicker. I understand why people fly. My friends think travelling over land and sea for twenty-six hours is extreme. As I look around this epic, aquatic monster and its cinema, shops, restaurants, amusements, bars and floors of accommodation, I would have to agree.

  The next day, we’re in the toilets of a service station, where the driver we’ve just hitched a lift with is taking a break. The complex looks identical to every other service station I’ve ever been in, with the same six corporations providing the hamburgers, chocolate, coffee, cigarettes, accommodation and news. There’s no indication, anywhere, of what part of the country we are now in. A cover version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ is, rather absurdly, being piped through the airwaves as my piss disappears downwards out of a spotlessly clean urinal. It isn’t paradise, but it does have a parking lot. I had thought about going under the mature, lonely-looking oak tree next to the car park, but there were people everywhere, people who may not have appreciated me pissing there. When we get back in the car, the driver thinks we’re near Bishop’s Stortford, but he doesn’t know for sure either. M11, he says.

  As soon as we reach her old home in rural Norfolk, Kirsty’s father David is pouring us both a large glass of plum wine which a friend of his had made. What a mission, he says. David has become a close friend of mine, and the length of the journey has made seeing him even more special. By the time we finish the second glass, we’re ready for bed.

  ~

  Setting the fire, part III.

  A story on the front page of a regional newspaper I’m about to burn says that the government has just released a report claiming that ‘the blue economy’ – what poets and romantics might still sentimentally refer to as ‘the ocean’ – could be worth €4.7 billion to the Irish economy; that is, if we can build up industries capable of exploiting it to its full potential. Energy production, tourism and all sorts of other initiatives are mooted as ways of creating new jobs for the west of Ireland, boosting economic growth, and opening up new opportunities for graduates. The blue economy is the next big thing. Every square metre of under-utilised ocean is basically lost jobs, lost money, lost opportunity. Who could argue with that?

  I’ve heard the same argument made about the Arctic, and every other wild place on the planet.

  ~

  ‘Twenty years a-growing, twenty years in bloom, twenty years a-stooping and twenty years declining.’ While Muiris Ó Súilleabháin himself was just beginning to bloom, the island around him had begun to stoop. Having endured the Great Famine, many personal tragedies, armed bailiffs and daily battles with one of the most dangerous stretches of water in Europe, the people of the Great Blasket finally met their match in the form of a ruling triumvirate who had, long since, been gathering steam elsewhere: globalisation, mass urbanisation and their father, industrialism.

  Though their livelihoods comprised a thousand little things, only fishing brought them any real financial reward. And for their first 130 years there they earned enough to get themselves from one year to the next, with the sale of fish paying for salt, dowries, boots, coffins and breeches along the way.

  Such was the abundance of mackerel, pollock, cod and lobster – coupled with their small boats’ inability to overfish – that in 1921 there were four hundred naomhóga fishing off the West Kerry coast, all providing decent livelihoods for fishermen whose material needs were quite simple. Times were more or less good, and the population of the island was at its peak at around 175 people (which, interestingly, is around the number of people that anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests we can maintain a meaningful relationship with). But just beyond the horizon, industry was on its way, and by the summer of 1921 change was floating in on the breeze that came off the Sound. In Island Cross-Talk, Ó Criomhthain begins to see the dangers ahead:

  When I turned to gaze north, there I could see boats fishing away like any other day of the week, but they were not from here, they were from the land of France. They are causing great harm and they will cause more, and not in one way only. Besides carrying off the fish, they are weakening the Faith too, for the poor Island fisherman is watching them catch the share of the fish that should be his, on a Sunday, which for him is a day of rest.

  A few years later, Ó Súilleabháin would prophesy the future of the island’s people with remarkable precision. Speaking with a girl he had just fallen for, Muiris proclaimed:

  Don’t you see it yourself? The chief livelihood – that’s the fishing – is gone under foot, and when the fishing is gone under foot the Blasket is gone under foot, for all the boys and girls who have any vigour in them will go over the sea: and take the tip off my ear, Mauraid, if that day is far hence.

  The year after these words were published in 1933, the local naomhóga fishing off the coast of Kerry numbered no more than eighty, and with the falling prices that are heralded as one of the many benefits of industry, even the Islanders struggled to keep going.

  With the strength and faith of the people weakened,
the industrial machine – in its need for efficiency, labour and markets – began its second wave of attack on the Great Blasket: mass urbanisation, and the promise of a better life elsewhere. Large ships began taking people on the long voyage to America. By 1947 Gearóid Cheaist Ó Catháin would be the youngest person on the island by thirty years and thus earned international fame as ‘the loneliest boy in the world’. He wrote in his memoirs that once the exodus of young people had started, ‘those who remained had no choice but to move’. Most headed for the next parish west – Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

  The night before their sons and daughters would leave, the Islanders would have an ‘American Wake’, as those who made the long journey would likely never return, nor be seen alive by their own kinsfolk again.

  The exodus was understandable. Life on the island was tough, and America was presenting itself as a land of plenty for those willing to work hard enough. Unlike the back-to-the-landers of the 1960s, who had experienced urban life and were consciously rejecting it, the young Islanders at this point could only see the exciting possibilities, and knew little of the sacrifices that would eventually come with the new life. In his foreword to the poet Micheál Ó Guithín’s book, A Pity Youth Does Not Last, Professor George Thomson writes that, ‘America offered those exiles an escape from the poverty of their home life, but only on the condition that they surrendered their cultural values. Some paid this price without regret, others with a life-long sense of loss; for a few it was too heavy, and they came home.’

  Ó Guithín was one of those for whom the price was too heavy; but by the time he returned, the island was on the brink of evacuation. He would later mourn the death of his home, and wrote in his poem, ‘A Rock, Great its Fame’:

  Each man set off for himself

  The panic was senseless

  From that day out truly

  Friend did not stand by friend