MONDAY, OCTOBER 1
WORDS I DON’T HAVE
I looked up antonyms for a water inlets after Sally referred to a narrow inlet as a finger. Raised landlocked, I am sad that I have none of these words in my vocabulary. Here are some: the arm of the sea, basin (where a river meets an estuary), bay, canal, channel, cove, delta, firth (a long narrow indentation on the sea coast), harbor (a protected ingress), lock (where the lake narrows with a limited space passage), slough (a wetland or shallow lake), sound (large sea or open inlet deeper than a bite and wider than a fjord or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of water), straight (a narrow passage connecting to large bodies of water). Whew…..
More than I can remember.
Curious about the unusual structure of the side-by-side, flat columns of rocks, I looked up rock types as well. It seems to me that the rocks we saw on Sherkin Island are basalt. Basalt is formed by a combination of cooled lava and the sea. But somehow those rocks got sliced and tipped sideways.
HORSEBACK RIDING
After Saffi and I had our morning walk, I headed to Olive’s and Peter’s house. Olive was taking me for a horse ride. I was so excited.
I got lost on the way there, not surprising. It’s hard for me to navigate without Chloe. But getting lost is always about finding something for me. On this tiny misadventure, I found silence in my head and an old stone church and cemetery resting near the cliff’s edge, the sea wild below.
Olive and her four dogs greeted me at her door. Maria, who helps Olive, was busy in the kitchen. Olive was finishing her six month sabbatical and was preparing to return to work. She and her husband have two daughters and on our ride around the loop, she talked mostly about her girls.
Their contemporary, beautiful home is constructed of glass and stone and like the old church down the road, sits on the cliff’s edge with an awe inspiring view of the sea. The house pulsates with life, animals, teenagers, and the faint remains of recent guests. I put on the wool socks and rubber boots Olive lent me for the ride and followed her up the path to the barn We passed a field with some horses and donkeys. One donkey pursed his lips and brayed at us.
It was 10 in the morning when Olive threw the English saddles on the horses; hers was a tall, part-thoroughbred stallion and mine, a small grey mare. Olive thought the mare might be in heat because the night before her horse jumped the fence to get to her.
As we rode we talked about all sorts of things. Olive is so bright, her wit quick, her kindness obvious. It was interesting to hear how her family ended up in Milross, in the middle of what seemed nowhere to me. There is something about most of the women we have met in West Cork that reminds me of the women in New York City. They are open books, unafraid of their stories. Such a contrast to Vancouver where it takes about five years to get the same amount of information as I could get in an hour here. It’s somehow a testament to the effect culture has on how we relate to the world.
NEXT TO SALLY
Once home, Chloe and I pushed Saffi into the car and rushed to Sally’s for our weekly walk. We walked the Union Hall loop from Sally’s house through town, back by the Lily Lake and on the main streets through Union Hall. We talked about the landscape, Kavenaugh, and people. It was sunny and bright outside. .
