It Occurs to Me: Healing and consolation

For those of us blessed to be reared in the shadow of Muckish, Errigal, the Blue Stacks or Slieve League, there is something about the pull of mountains which will always draw us back.

Maybe as children, we imagined Heaven to be a wee bit higher than our favourite peak, or as we grow older, we appreciated, that, as we surrender to the inevitability of age, the solidity of the cloud wrapped ‘Sleibhte’ is a reminder that, when we are gone, the constants will remain and hug a sky, above which we hope to meet loved ones again.

I recall first reading Henry Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ some forty years ago. I re-read it quite often and this extract is just one of many examples of his beautiful lyricism: “One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity so see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set
my heel in it as I walk.

Fogs and reins and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my woodpile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel’s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters…”

In 1999, Don McGurgan, who opened the BBC studios in Omagh, and who had literally worked around the clock for all the world’s media in the aftermath of the Omagh bomb, suggested John O’Donohue’s ‘Anam Cara’ to me as a book of healing and consolation. How true that was.

John wrote: “On a farm you learn to respect nature, particularly for the wisdom of its dark underworld. When you sow things in the spring, you commit them to the darkness of the soil.”
Both Thoreau and Walden came to mind when I recently read Maggie Doyle’s wonderful ‘Mountain Notes…A Nature Diary’, written during Covid. It is revelatory and life-affirming.

THE NAMING OF A MOUNTAIN …
When I visited the Rathfriland and Hilltown areas in County Down recently, I was drawn immediately to the beauty of the snow-capped Mournes. Instinctively, I hummed the Percy French song. I recalled many visits to the other side of the mountains when I stayed with my friends, Leo and Sodilva Murphy in Rostrevor.

Leo was the legendary full-back on the 1960/61 Down teams who first brought Sam Maguire north, and they named their late son Donard after the famous Mourne peak visible from their home. Leo sadly passed away a few years ago…he was known as the ‘Ice-cool kid from the Mournes’.

Maggie Doyle comes from Dechomet Mountain in the foothills of the Mournes, Dechomet being a Viking word meaning ‘good viewing or look out post’. She was a very successful producer/manager in the BBC in Belfast but took early retirement in 2019, moving back to Dromara with her jazz musician husband and broadcaster, Linley Hamilton. They now run ‘Magy’s Farm’, a music venue and rehearsal space as well as a talent development centre. Between live and recorded music sessions at their home music venue, they mentor a group of talented young musicians, and are seriously devoted to promoting and nurturing music.

In January 2020, Maggie started to keep a diary about their first year back on the family farm and as she explains:
“I grew up on this small dairy farm where my mother, Maggie, milked eight cows twice every day for years after my father, Nicholas died following a short illness in 1974.

I was 12 years old and my sister, Carmel, was eight and for the three of us the loss was immeasurable. But life on the farm had to go on and, together, we took good care of our cows because they were our breadwinners and our friends…” ‘Being close to nature’ may seem a cliched phrase but Maggie’s pandemic diary literally ‘grounds’ the reader in its intimacy, and the naming of donkeys, birds et al, makes her household and environs one big happy ‘nest’.

She writes: “I think the naming of a mountain is so important - an acknowledgment of its power and character’ and she not only names the 12 peaks but shares their old Gaelic meanings. I am reminded of our own Errigal, the highest peak of the Seven Sisters, ‘Eireceal’ meaning ‘Oratory’, a place of prayer.

When Maggie tells us that, some 400 million years ago, “Sheets of ice from Scotland and Donegal forced their way across the plains, carving out valleys and forming the Mourne Mountains”, I think of the original meaning of our own Muckish, and of Maggie’s Slieve Muck, and how she and Linley are most definitely on ‘The Pig’s Back’ under Dechomet. Donegal readers will love the parallels…Slieve Croob is the ‘Mountain of the Hoof’ and as Maggie says, “”...the sheep own the slopes here.” We know the feeling!

The Proceeds of ‘Mountain Notes’ go to The Donkey Sanctuary and I suggest you read it in the Spring, a time of birth and growth…and dip into it every season thereafter.

UNDER DECHOMET
I love to think of a sheet of ice, leaving Donegal with vengeance,
Tearing east through Ulster and forming the Mournes…
The twelve peaks shivering in the onslaught from the west,
But standing firm like Leo Murphy, the “Ice Cool Kid from Mourne”
Against the Kingdom In Croke Park in 1960 and’ 61.

“Look for me in the spring trees”, Blanche the starling whispered,
And you did, and found her lighting up the sycamores.
I see you both on the slopes of Slieve Croob,
Wandering through the sheep, for whom lockdown
Simply means a bit more footfall among the hooves.

Yoelene the ewe, Morphy the cat,
Red kites, blackbirds, wrens and larks,
A hedgerow chorus to compliment the high brass
Of a trumpet awakening in your barn,
Neilly and Sasha braying like tubas.

Slieve Donard, Commedagh, Binian, Bearnagh,
Lamagan, Meelbeg, Meelmore, Slieve Muck,
Slievenaglogh and the curved peak of Ben Crom.
Cousins Errigal, Muckish and Blue Stacks say hello,
And thank God for ice and ice-cool kids.

PERSON OF THE YEAR
Mention of Muckish reminds me that the awarding of ‘Donegal Person of the Year’ to the people of Creeslough will be universally welcomed. Awards will not necessarily assuage the ongoing grief but this acknowledgement is testament to the shared shock and pain, not only of fellow Donegal people, but far beyond these shores.
When I wrote “Go Rest High On That Mountain” last October, I included the lines:
“But the ten red candles will flicker,
And light up the blackest of days,
And beads will entwine all the fingers
Of those lost in death's tangled maze.”
Let’s hope this award will add at least another flicker to that light.