Rural Ireland is a very special place. It is a rugged misty landscape steeped in Celtic mysticism and offering abundant opportunity for consultation with nature and self. Yes, that rural landscape we tear through in a hurry in our motorized vehicles, separating us from the Earth that bore us, is one of the most unique landscapes on Earth.

The Irish landscape is full of memory; it hold the traces and ruins of ancient civilization. There is a curvature in the landscape, a colour and shape that constantly frustrates the eye anxious for symmetry or linear simplicity. The Celtic mind was never drawn to the single line; it avoided ways of seeing and being which seek satisfaction in certainty.
John O'Donohue. Anam Cara.

Within a short distance of every man, woman and child on this island there exists expanses of dark mysterious mountains, heath and bog, silver lakes and gurgling streams. Once you have lived by running water, a font of life, it is difficult to give it up. Running water draws you closer to the land as it draws life from every pore of the landscape.

The Irish are not renowned for their love of the outdoors. Perhaps it is because we live so close to the land that we take it for granted. I certainly spent many years utterly unaware of the profound beauty of my Celtic surroundings, but at some point in my ordinary existence on the western fringe of Europe, I fell in love with the land. What was most wonderous about this love affair, as with all love affairs, is that it was unexpected. I had grown up within view of the mighty Atlantic ocean in a small town called Tralee, situated in a relatively remote part of Ireland's Southwest. Shrouded in a mist of cloud that obscured my vision of life beyond the rural, I grew up beside hills and glens overseen by a rugged but gentle topography of assertive mountains and rolling hills of bog land and granite. Yet in all my childhood I had never noticed the wonderful spaces around me.

The rugged wilderness of sea and land that circumscribed my simple existence served merely as a backdrop for the unfolding drama of my youth and my eventual unceremonious arrival at adulthood. While I enjoyed more outdoor pursuits perhaps than most other boys, such as river-fishing, swimming, and exploring the seemingly endless green space that surrounded the family home at the edge of town, I was utterly unaware of the deepening love I was developing for the land beneath my feet. Moreover, I had at that point no appreciation whatever of the sublime beauty of wilderness, and the important role it would later play in my own psychological, emotional and spiritual development as an adult.

My home ground is the wild and lonely Dingle peninsula in Ireland's Southwest. Now I live within short driving distance of the Wicklow mountains and the wonderous mountain lakes and streams they hide high in the hills, out of view of the casual passer-by.

I have my dear friend Helena to thank for introducing me to Achill island, where seals swim undisturbed in the bay, overshadowed by magnificent and foreboding mountains. Lonely walks wind their way through a smattering of ancient relics that speak of lost wisdom.

I have my dear friend Ré to thank for re-introducing me to the barren expanses of remotest Conamara in Ireland's West. Here the humanely spaced population speaks the native tongue that was gently woven from the social fabric and the ethic of the landscape. Between the words, their language tells the story of a life on the land.

I have myself to thnak for taking the time to wander the lonley Burren of Co. Clare on lazy Summer days. Here on Ireland's rugged West coast is an eerie land of jaded rock formation that stretches to the horizon in an other-worldly blanket of grantie and sandstone. The mystical significance of the place was not lost to the ancient celts who named it 'Burren', meaning "rocky land". Here on Ireland's only desertscape I have sat on the warm rock carpet of the west and passed away days. If you remain still, and venture to the quietest regions you mmight be visited by feral goats. In your wanderings you will come across many ancient structures, such as dolmens and wedge tombs that served to praise the living, the dead and the transcendant. These ancient symbols have stood silent in the wild west for 2000 to 6000 years. Never far from the coast,the air is full of salty textures and the sky littered with sea birds unfamiliar to the city dweller. The cliffs of moher make an excelent viewing point from which to consider the end of the land and look West towards the next stop in the Atlantic - the USA - turn left at Greenland. Here the strange light of the Irish sky, filtered by clouds and whirlpools of water, throws shadows and shapes across the land and commands its already pointed features into shapr relief. No two hours in Ireland are the same and the passage of time is marked sharply by seasons and the tiny movements of a restless nature.

In my own native Kerry I have seen the views the inspired the ancient Celts to build passgae tombs to the dead more than 6000 years ago. These lie unexcavated all over our land. With my walking buddies Tom and Ger I huffed and puffeed my way to the peak of the Paps in East Kerry, so names precisly because they resemble the breasts of an Celtic Godess. On each of the two mountains lies a "nipple" in the form of an ancient burial cairn. From here the view back towards Tralee bay and the lakes of Killarney are breathtaking. A wonderful view of the Kerry Way walking trail also presents itself - calling you ever further off route into this verdant wonderland.

It is all too easy to glamorise foreign travel. Foreign places offer adventure for the fatigued mind. But local places offer mystery and solitude for the fatigued soul. The challenge is to see local spaces in the glare of natural light, unfiltered by the neon mindset of the urban dweller. In that gentle shroud of natural light, the rural landscape rises up in multiple dimensions. Lay over this landscape and it will reveal something of the shape of the soul.