The Way Home

by Mark Boyle

  Aside from the philosophical aspects, the decision had practical implications. I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible, so that I could return to the life I had come to love. So, having not sat in front of a screen for eighteen months, I suddenly found myself spending twelve hours a day, for seven days, turning my carefully hand-written manuscript into an electronic, publishing-friendly, generic form. Going back to using a computer – even for this relatively brief, defined task – was almost as insightful an experience as giving it up had been in the first place.

  To begin with, I could barely type. Qwerty no longer made sense to me as I searched for the initial letter of the title page. When I worked in business it was normal for me to spend days on end on my arse in front of a screen. But now my head felt so fried by lunchtime each day that I had to restrain myself from opening a bottle of wine. I was less able to cope with something most of us now consider to be run-of-the-mill, and I couldn’t work out if that was a sign of mental weakness or strength (Krishnamurti once remarked that ‘it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society’). By the end of the first day, my back ached, and the repetitive strain injury I had carried for years on my right wrist had made a mild and temporary comeback.

  But the effects ran deeper. I felt less purposeful, like I no longer knew what my life was about, or what I stood for. By evening I felt entirely disconnected from the landscape around me, like I was no longer a part of it, but some strange virtual universe instead. The natural light hurt my eyes as I re-emerged outside.

  In some ways it was good and important for me to temporarily re-enter that world of things, so as to dispel any romantic memories I had about life being much better and easier with machines. The experience of it was such that, having made the compromise, I’m not sure I would make it again.

  A couple of days after I finished typing I slowly felt the effects of screen-staring and the sedentary life wear off. I found my connection to my place return, like I belonged here again. Still, I would do well to remember how it felt for those seven days when I’m next out hand-washing the clothes.

  That’s enough typing from me. Outside is calling. I can hear a magpie squawking madly as another is under a tree, plucking out the feathers of a flapping wood pigeon. Up above a bullfinch sings a duet with his mate, for love, or life, or the love of life.

  Outside. That’s where I’m meant to be.

  A Short Note on the Free Hostel

  As mentioned throughout the book, on our smallholding we run a free hostel, event space and sibín called The Happy Pig. People come to stay in it for all sorts of reasons: some to get stuck in and experience a more elemental way of life; others to take time out to read, walk, play music or be creative; many seem to be trying to work out what they want to meaningfully do with what the poet Mary Oliver calls their ‘one wild and precious life’. It hosts occasional courses, evening events and shindigs, and it is available to groups to use for free. I could write a book (but I won’t) on many of the characters who have passed through here.

  It works a bit like a bothy. Everyone is welcome. You can stay for up to three nights, and as long as you’re not bothering anyone you can stay for longer too. Some people have stayed for months. We have no website, and as such we are like the hostels of old. In fact, as such it is like the everything of old.

  We don’t give out directions. You have to follow your nose, and your own innate sense of adventure. Knock on doors, ask shopkeepers, take wrong turns. Don’t even think about using your smartphone. We have no booking system. You can write to me in advance – to which I’ll unlikely reply, unless you want to organise an event – or you can do as most do and just show up at the door. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. While we accept donations, none are expected, and anything that is contributed towards the building’s small costs, by those who can and want to, is done strictly anonymously.

  A few important notes. If you come from overseas, we ask that instead of flying you come by land and sea. Better still, walk or hitch or crawl on your hands and knees. Anything other than getting here effortlessly. When you do get here, we ask that you are self-reliant for food and your own entertainment, though you are more than welcome to whatever we can offer of both. If you have a musical instrument or a song, bring it. Enthusiasm is always welcome. Those of us who live here permanently don’t always have the time or inclination to hang out, but we often do.

  So the guidelines are quite simple. Enjoy your time here. Be mindful of what you use and why you’re using it. And leave the place at least as well as you found it. A bit like life, really.

  Select Bibliography

  Abbey, Edward, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (McGraw-Hill, 1968)

  ——The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West (Plume, 1991)

  Ansell, Neil, Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills (Penguin, 2012)

  Berry, Wendell, The Peace of Wild Things (Penguin, 2018)

  ——The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (Allen Lane, 2017)

  Cahalan, James M., Edward Abbey: A Life (University of Arizona Press, 2001)

  Carney, Michael and Hayes, Gerald, From the Great Blasket to America: The Last Memoir by an Islander (The Collins Press, 2013)

  Colvile, Robert, The Great Acceleration: How the World is Getting Faster, Faster (Bloomsbury, 2017)

  Connell, John, The Cow Book: The Story of Life on a Family Farm (Granta, 2018)

  Deakin, Roger, Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees (Penguin, 2007)

  Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, 1999)

  Dillard, Annie, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2013)

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library, 2000)

  Finkel, Michael, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Simon & Schuster, 2017)

  Fleming, David, Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It (Chelsea Green, 2016)

  Fogarty, Pádraic, Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature (The Collins Press, 2017)

  Griffiths, Jay, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time (Flamingo, 1999)

  Hayes, Gerald W. and Kane, Eliza, The Last Blasket King: Pádraig Ó Catháin, An Rí (The Collins Press, 2015)

  Jones, Tobias, A Place of Refuge: An Experiment in Communal Living, The Story of Windsor Hill Wood (Riverrun, 2016)

  Kavanagh, Patrick, A Poet’s Country: Selected Prose (The Lilliput Press, 2003)

  ——Collected Poems (Allen Lane, 2004)

  Kelly, Kevin, What Technology Wants (Penguin, 2011)

  Kingsnorth, Paul, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist (Faber & Faber, 2017)

  Langlands, Alexander, Cræft: How Traditional Crafts Are About More Than Just Making (Faber & Faber, 2017)

  Lawrence, D.H., Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Penguin, 1960)

  Leopold, Aldo, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press, 1949)

  Lopez, Barry, Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape (Bantam, 1987)

  Mac Coitir, Niall, Ireland’s Wild Plants: Myths, Legends and Folklore (The Collins Press, 2015)

  ——Ireland’s Birds: Myths, Legends and Folklore (The Collins Press, 2017)

  Macfarlane, Robert, Landmarks (Penguin, 2016)

  ——The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Penguin, 2013)

  Mears, Ray, Essential Bushcraft (Hodder and Stoughton, 2003)

  ——Outdoor Survival Handbook (Ebury Press, 2001)

  Michelet, Madame, Nature: or, the Poetry of Earth and Sea (T. Nelson and Sons, 1880)

  Monbiot, George, Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life (Penguin, 2014)

  Muir, John, Wilderness Essays (Gibbs Smith, 2015)

  Mumford, Lewis, The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967)

  ——The Myth of the Machine Volume II: The Pentagon of Power (Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich,
1970)

  Mytting, Lars, Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way (MacLehose Press, 2015)

  Nearing, Helen and Nearing, Scott, Living The Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World (Schocken, 1989)

  Ó Catháin, Gearóid Cheaist, The Loneliest Boy in the World: The Last Child of the Great Blasket Island (The Collins Press, 2015)

  O’Connell, Mark, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death (Granta, 2017)

  Ó Criomhthain, Tomás, Island Cross-Talk: Pages from a Blasket Island Diary (Oxford University Press, 1986)

  ——The Islandman (Oxford University Press, 1951)

  Ó Guithín, Micheál, A Pity Youth Does Not Last: Reminiscences of the Last Blasket Island Poet (Oxford University Press, 1982)

  Ó Súilleabháin, Muiris, Twenty Years A-Growing (Oxford University Press, 1933)

  Rebanks, James, The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District (Penguin, 2016)

  Richards, Matt, Deerskins into Buckskins: How to Tan with Natural Materials (Backcountry Publishing, 1997)

  Sale, Kirkpatrick, Human Scale (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1980)

  Sayers, Peig, Peig (The Talbot Press, 1983)

  Snyder, Gary, The Practice of the Wild (Counterpoint, 2010)

  Thoreau, Henry David, The Journal 1837–1861 (New York Review of Books, 2009)

  ——The Portable Thoreau (Penguin, 2012)

  Tree, Isabella, Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm (Picador, 2018)

  Whitman, Walt, The Works of Walt Whitman (Wordsworth Editions, 1995)

  Wiseman, John ‘Lofty’, SAS Survival Handbook (Collins, 2003)

  Wohlleben, Peter, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World (William Collins, 2017)

  Acknowledgements

  It’s quite a complicated thing writing the acknowledgements for a book when you live as I do. It is difficult to know who or what to include, or leave out, when everyone and everything you have encountered in your life has influenced it, and the writing which emerges from it, in both subtle and profound ways.

  And so I will keep it simple: thank you, Creation.

  A Oneworld Book

  First published by Oneworld Publications, 2019

  This ebook edition published 2019

  Copyright © Mark Boyle 2019

  The moral right of Mark Boyle to be identified as the Author of this

  work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78607-600-7 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-1-78607-602-1 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-78607-601-4 (ebook)

  The lines from ‘Inniskeen Road: July Evening’ and ‘Pegasus’ by Patrick Kavanagh

  are reprinted from Collected Poems, edited by Antoinette Quinn (Allen Lane, 2004),

  by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of the late Katherine

  B. Kavanagh, through the Jonathan Williams Literary Agency.

  The lines from ‘A Standing Ground’ by Wendell Berry reprinted

  by permission of Counterpoint Press. Copyright © 1971, 2011

  by Wendell Berry, from Farming: A Hand Book.

  The lines from ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’ by

  Wendell Berry reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.

  Copyright © 1971, 1972, 1973 by Wendell Berry, from The Country of Marriage.

  The lines from ‘A Pity Youth Does Not Last’ by Micheál Ó Guithín

  reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Oneworld Publications Ltd

  10 Bloomsbury Street

  London WC1B 3SR

  England