At the Edge of Ireland (27 page)

“I know who you two are!” cried this woman as she pointed to us with the certainty of a witness at a criminal suspect lineup. We were right in the middle of deciding which domestic trauma we should attend to first, and suddenly, here was this strident lady, obviously very American in attitude and ambience, rushing toward us with an outstretched finger, determined to tell us and everyone else in the room exactly who we were and what we were doing here on Beara.

And the odd thing was that she got most of it right. I suppose we could have done the British thing and become all huffy and puffy about such an unexpected invasion of our privacy. But she was obviously the kind of individual who wouldn't even notice such an Anglophilic rebuff. So we laughed instead, invited her to sit down and tell us how she had managed to accumulate her remarkably accurate data.

And that was the beginning of a most entertaining and valued friendship. Carey's long love of Beara, her second home now for over sixteen years, and her extensive knowledge of the people here was intriguing, particularly when it encompassed reclusive celebrities who sought safe havens in and around Beara.

Later on in our relationship she even tried to arrange interviews for us with such notable “locals” as Maureen O'Hara (star of
The Quiet Man
, that classic Irish film with John Wayne), who still lives up in Glengarriff; Julia Roberts; the filmmaker Neil Jordan; and a little farther beyond Bantry, Jeremy Irons in his ancient castle, which on some odd whim he painted a joyous pink. In the end, and for a bizarre range of reasons, none of the interviews materialized, but Carey's other bulwarks of knowledge of local history, folklore, and all the rest of the Celtic-Gaelic-Gothic fantasy world here provided a sound foundation for a mutually enduring relationship.

A couple of days after our first meeting at the Internet center, she invited us to her seashore home in Adrigole, a few miles from Beara's infamous Hungry Hill. Over tea and homemade cookies, she regaled us with tales of how she and a friend had created this enticingly intimate and richly handcrafted retreat. Carey's talents and enthusiasm seemed boundless. She was particularly enamored by “our wonderful local characters here—Old Peg at the store, and Jim, the shoemaker. Real Beara people.” And then she set about telling us her life story. It certainly seemed that our new friend had enjoyed a vividly kaleidoscopic kind of existence encompassing a multiself array of interests, from real estate and property refurbishment, ceramics, jewelry making, and art, to Buddhist meditation (yes, the Dzogchen Center again), spiritual healing, architectural design, and occasional bouts of “amateurish” (her expression) writing.

Hungry Hill

Rather than put her vivid life story into my own words, it's possibly best merely to offer a partial transcript of the tape that we made of her colorful summary:

“I was born in Ashland, Wisconsin. And I was born rear end first…I always felt that was significant, as I seem to like to look at the ending of books first and then start reading from the beginning. My mom saw her dead father the moment I was born. Must have been the drugs…Leaping ahead, I graduated from Sun Prairie High School in 1969. I decided to become an X-ray technician and studied at the University of Wisconsin and practiced at the University Hospital in Madison. I learned quickly how to deal with death, and how to live with it.

“My husband and I got married like my mother and father did. During a war period—Vietnam—in a hurry and without really knowing one another. We were friends originally. We would have been better off if we'd stayed friends too. But then again, that's not really true because my beautiful daughter, Melissa Marie, came from that union. She I would never give back.

“After Brian and I got divorced, I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I went to hock my wedding ring when I met this jeweler who was selling his store and had an inventory to get rid of. I told him that maybe we could do some business together. So that's when I started selling jewelry in bars. I'd hit nine bars a night, and soon the word spread and women would gather around me when I came into a place to see what new jewelry I had out. It was the 1980s and everyone loved flash and sparkle and bling! Lots of ba-roque 'n' roll stuff. They called me ‘The Jewelry Lady from the East Side,' and my following grew. An article in the
Milwaukee Journal
about me brought some notoriety, and soon I had a line of people waiting to see me in a little office I was renting. Word of mouth is great in Milwaukee, and a couple who acted as agents booking major acts into the city started hiring me to make jewelry thank-you gifts for the visiting stars. I was commissioned to make Eric Clapton a tiny guitar that had strings you could pluck. Also Sammy Hagar, Mario Andretti, Paul Newman, Air Supply, the Moody Blues, Cher, Gladys Knight, Lou Rawls, even Liberace, and especially Tom Jones, who I kissed onstage. I made for him a little charm of a bra-and-panties tie tack.

“It was a great time. I met Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Paul Simon after they'd made their fabulous album
Graceland.
I made a pendant that symbolized how their music had spanned the globe, bringing awareness of the horrors of apartheid.

“Then things changed. My mother died in 1991 of ovarian cancer. Immediately afterward I got a phone call from a friend. She'd moved to Ireland but was returning to the States and asked me to come and help her pack. I needed a break, so I flew into Dublin in midwinter for a two-week stay. When I got there I found out that my friend could not get off work for longer than three days. So we worked hard together packing all her stuff, and after she left I decided to just drive wherever I felt like driving. I took my map and just set off. And as I worked my way down the coast, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the land. Finally I drove into Bantry, and there was a market going on. I bought some old lace and some jewelry and heard a voice in my head saying,
You could live here.
So I decided to explore the Beara Peninsula, and as I drove, it just got more and more beautiful. I stopped for toothpaste in Glengarriff at the drugstore and saw a sign that said
HARRINGTON'S PUB AND AUCTIONEERS
. I knew ‘auctioneers' meant real estate over here, so it suddenly hit me to go in and ask how much oceanfront property was going for in those days.

“Bernard Harrington was behind the bar, and I asked him, ‘Is this a real estate office or a pub?' ‘A little bit o' both' was his answer. And when I asked about oceanfront property for sale, he took me out to one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. A valley carved out of the side of a mountain with lovely green fields and the ocean crashing in on huge rocks. I took one look and knew I was gonna change my life and live there.

“It was one of the best decisions I ever made. And I quickly learned so much about healing in this place where there are so many wonderful healers who've come to this enchanted land. And I needed them. My body was a bit of a mess. I feel in my heart it's because the land is so ancient and untouched in so many places. There's still a pure energy here that's not compromised by industry or overpopulation. The light, the rain, the rainbows, and the quick wit of the people embrace me here. I've discovered so many beautiful places at the end of small dirt roads. The sea was so close to me that every day I looked out of my window to see seals, birds, and swans. It was, and still is, a place of incredible beauty. And I've known a happiness here that I don't think could be replicated anywhere else in the world.”

 

C
AREY'S CONTAGIOUS SPIRIT OF
urgency and energy energized us, and when she started to plan a series of exploratory expeditions for us to her favorite “secret spots” around Beara, we found ourselves unable to resist and decided just to go with the flow. Her flow, of course.

And quite a flow—and show—she provided over subsequent weeks. She had a deeply empathetic understanding of the Irish instinct for the mysteries of religious faith, for the supernatural, and for the long storyteller epics combining real and mystical events, which still form such a vital part of the fabric of the national psyche here.

In typical American fashion, Carey quickly opened her heart and spirit. “I try to find a kind of balance—six months here on Beara and six months back in the USA. But the trouble is, it's so hard to leave this place. I just love being here.”

We mentioned to her that we'd both been impressed by Julie Aldridge and her spiritual healing activities at Soul Ray. Carey laughed and clapped her hands. “Ah, yes—Julie! She's the best! Her art therapy is amazing. You know, she teaches that at Cork University every week. Her approach seems so simple the way she describes it—she says, ‘Your soul will talk to you through your drawing, and if you have someone to work through the process with you—a kind of interpreter—you start to see what you're trying to unravel in your life—patterns of hurt, abuse, whatever.' She knew I'd been through some traumas earlier in my own life and she said, ‘Look at your family and you'll see patterns that keep repeating themselves. It can be depression, early pregnancies, divorce, illnesses—all sorts of things. Emotional patterns, physical patterns—when you start recognizing and acknowledging the patterns, you can stop them from reemerging in your and your children's lives. Otherwise you'll just keep on continually repeating them.'”

“Yes,” said Anne. “And all this apparently can be revealed through art. That's what she was explaining to David and me. We were up there with her last week, and we saw her studio in the old cow byre at the back of their cottage. She kept most of her own artwork there—big ethereal canvases of oceanscapes and cloudscapes. Beautiful glowing colors. Sometimes she used gold leaf to emphasize horizons and reflections.”

Carey nodded vigorously. “Yeah, wonderful pieces. So energetic and yet…peaceful too. I tell you—this whole peninsula is a real hotbed of artistry and healing. There's a new generation of people here with amazing powers…I really feel blessed that I found this place. In some ways I think, well, like it kind of ‘saved' me. I was a bit of a mess when I first came and a lot of stuff I'd heard sounded a bit too mumbo jumbo for my tastes—for my needs. But you know, as time went on and I met more people and got involved in handcrafting this house, things began to make much more sense. They lost that dodgy ‘New Age' image and became…well, I guess you'd say…much more pragmatic…eminently sensible and focused.”

Then Carey suddenly stopped and chuckled. “I'm wondering…are you two open to a spot of eminently unsensible spontaneity? Right now?”

“Always,” we answered in unison.

“Well…why don't we take a little drive into the mountains. There's so much to see out there. We've got two hundred and fourteen official prehistoric sites on Beara and countless others that aren't even on the formal record—stone circles, dolmens, souterrains, standing stones, the lot! And there are special places—really special. Julie helped me find my own ‘mother earth place'…I'd love to show it to you…”

You don't turn down offers of this kind, and of course, even if you tried to, Carey would somehow carry you off anyway in a surge of effervescent energy.

Which is precisely what she did.

Looking back, I remember a magical jumble of images and stories as we drove on rough back roads deeper and deeper into the mountainous heart of this wild peninsula. The scale of the place is utterly confusing. From the map we knew that Beara at its widest point was barely eight miles across from Bantry Bay in the south to the Kenmare River and the hazy hills of the Ring of Kerry to the north. And yet it seemed with Carey as our guide that we wriggled and romped for hours and never appeared to get close to either coast. And it didn't matter. We had no particular destination in mind, and we were happy just to bounce and float through this secret hinter-land, listening to Carey's tales and seeing the landscape through her eyes. Eyes that brought the land to life as she pointed to a huge up-surge of broken strata that tore through the turf and towered a good thirty feet into the chill moorland air.

“That's Mass Rock—one of a number of places where the Catholics would gather to worship, away from the prying eyes and terrible punishments of the British Protestant overlords a couple of centuries back.”

She pointed to a nearby broken capstone of an enormous neolithic dolmen, two small stone circles half hidden in thick brush, one very prominent standing stone over ten feet high, and a host of shadowy lumps and bumps in the earth that she insisted were the remains of human settlements over three thousand years old.

Then we descended rapidly in a series of sudden twists and curls through a rumpus of tumbling hillocks down into a lush valley of alders, dwarf beech, green meadows, and remnants of ancient peat beds close to a winding stream.

“People around here still treasure their ‘turf rights.' They're written into the house and farm deeds and were once very jealously guarded. There's not so much cutting going on nowadays—you can still see a couple of stacks up there.” Carey pointed up the valley, where a small waterfall tumbled lacelike off a rocky precipice. “But once it was your lifeblood for the winter. If you didn't cut enough turf and dry it properly on the moor before carrying it back to your house in your wicker creel basket—some could weigh a hundred and fifty pounds when they were full—then woe betide your winter nights. It's not so much ice and snow and the like. We never got much of that because of the Gulf Stream. It's more the damp chill, which can eat into your bones like acid. And I know! I've got arthritis, which is why I usually go back to the States during the winter. I could hardly move about if I stayed here!”