“HIGH winds, storm Ciara, I’m not sure,” I text my friend. We had planned a day’s retreat in the wilds of the Mournes – a day of rest, relaxation and a little silence. But Storm Ciara was howling like a banshee on our rooftop, rattling the chimney tops.
Ever since my cousin treated us to Darby O’Gill and the Little People in the Strand cinema over 50 years ago, howling winds give me the shivers. That damn banshee and the mad leprechaun played merry hell with my dreams.
“There is a storm, it’s blowing a gale and I’m a journalist, storms bring trees down and kill people,” I text my friend.
“Let’s see what the morning brings,” she texts back.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum – yin and yang – I’m a glass half empty and she’s a glass half full. She has winning ways – she got me to go into the baths at Lourdes – and that was my third visit; before that I wouldn’t have dipped a toe.
And since she had offered to drive in front of me because we were heading different directions afterwards, I followed kindly in her light and went roads less travelled past Spa.
There were grey waters whipped by the breeze, country roads looped up and down, and the mountains towering over us.
We got there, me just behind and wondering how the hell I’d ever find my way home on my own. But even in a storm, it was beautiful.
When you lift up your eyes to the hills, then your troubles slip softly from your shoulders, easy as a soft woollen shawl.
“Here,” we said and she pulled out her yoga mat from the car and, of course, I remembered that I had forgotten mine.
“Here,” I said.
It was that kind of a day... for just being “here” for just “now”.
The welcome was so warm and the big log fire and the candles and new daffodils and tulips so fresh and bright, that nothing mattered.
The man who owns the room is a Mournes man right to his boots. I never met him but he’s a mountainy man for sure. He has a lookout point where you can watch for red kites; his field is home to a horse and a Shetland pony that might have crunched a barley sugar but I forgot that along with the yoga mat.
The room where we spent the day sings songs of a bygone farming world. The walls are home to a set of old hammers, a huge two-person saw, and the divil of a pitchfork.
“It reminds me of my wedding,” I tell my friend.
We had a private room and above the top table where we sat enjoying the fun, two big rifles were strung up as decoration. They were hunting rifles, I suppose, arranged butt to butt – handsome indeed.
“If it all goes wrong, sure just grab one of those,” joked one of our guests.
The mountainy man has also stuck up a photo of an old orange Mini outside a red telephone box. Red telephone boxes hold happy memories – except when you hauled open the door to be hit by the whiff of someone caught short the night before.
There is even a punt note pinned to the wall for those of us who remember the joy of collecting the old grant and feeling beyond rich in the long ago. And there are poems – of course there are Heaney poems, rooted in the earth and RS Thomas features too.
When the winds raged and the rain thrashed the windows, the coal stove glowed red and it felt so safe.
Nothing is so beautiful as a mountain. So when we went out in the gale to stand and look at the mountains – shadowy sisters – then all felt right with the world.
It was a pause – a hiatus in the madness of life.
When you stop and let things be, then peace filters in. There was time for silence. I couldn’t do a week on a silent treat but I could do an hour or two.
And when you are served beautiful homemade food – fresh, colourful – and you eat in silence, then it tastes even better. And when you walk slowly and let the earth kiss your feet, then all is well. Breathe, taste what you eat, take time to enjoy.
How beautiful it was and you carry the gift of the day in your heart for the hard weeks ahead.
