Letter from Galway
The other day, I texted my sister to send me pictures of the aspen groves changing colors — “ASAP,” I requested. I never did get those photos, but I presume it’s because I woke her up at 6 in the morning. In a flash of homesickness, I seemed to have forgotten about the 7-hour difference.
As of now, it’s been a month and a half here on the west coast of Ireland since I began working on a degree in writing at the University of Galway. Now that some of the newness has worn off, over more than a few pots of tea I’ve considered what it means for me to be here on this familiar, yet foreign, island. Of course, I’ve been taking every opportunity I can to immerse myself, and from what I’ve been told, time and time again, the West is the best.
“Galway is real Ireland,” locals tell me over the foam of a Guinness. While they’re maybe a little biased, I can understand the sentiment.
Over here, looking from the other side of the Atlantic, the pubs overflow with traditional music nearly every night, and you have to get a barstool early if you don’t feel like being elbowed by an accordion player for the next few hours. For a breather, you can walk to the canal. On the way there, you’ll hear different songs from every wooden doorway spilling out onto the narrow cobblestone streets. And — if it isn’t raining — the canal is the perfect place to soak up several pints of stout and a steaming box of fish and chips, all the while watching wild swans preen themselves in the water.
Some of my professors actually encourage that sort of rambunctious, writerly behavior. But that’s all for the evenings. In the day, I spend more time on buses to the countryside in a vain search for hikes that don’t come close to mimicking the rugged trails I’m used to back in the Valley. Instead, it’s green, grassy knolls as far as the eye can see and more sheep than trees — at least, it seems to me.
It’s funny, before I got here I studied up on Irish folklore. I think all those tales of giants, druids and fairies gave me an image of Irish “wildness,” whereas in reality there’s little of that kind of landscape. I feel at home in forests (hence me bothering my sister for aspens) and the comparative lack of wild has been a little hard to get used to. However, I was lucky enough to meet a local ecologist who filled in the picture for me.
Thousands of years ago, over 80% of Ireland was forested by ecosystems not dissimilar to those alive and well in the Pacific Northwest. That was the wilderness in which those legends of mighty heroes and sacred, ancient oaks came to be. But centuries of colonialism thinned the woods until only 2% of native forests remained.
Frankly, folks, such as myself, wanting to see the same Hibernian wilderness that scared the togas off of the Romans are a millennium too late. To my ecologist friend and plenty of others, the cozy pastures of present Ireland are home, and they wouldn’t soon trade their sheep for wolves. And I considered that although those wild, mythic spirits may have lost their haunts among the watercress and hawthorns, they certainly seem alive and well between the stomp of dancers and the rhythms of the harp pouring out the doorways of the pub. Just another thing to meditate about over another round of pints.
Sláinte,
Will Buzzerd