Burren

Wild surf, grykes, clints, cliffs and water water everywhere.

A storm that raged all night and rattled the windows of my humble accommodation.  A dawn stole out into the light quietly so as not to wake the sleeping drunken New Year revelers. A car window wiper that suddenly stopped working but fortunately on the passenger side so I could keep on going in the driving rain.  It was a perfect day to go underground. Into a cave kept secret for 30 years by the local man who found it. 30 years hiding out in his own big cave. Bear skeletons preserved in the cold dark tomb. From a time when bears lived in Ireland. Hearing myself wish 'if only we could get them back'. Hunted to extinction and extinction is forever. I go out the 'In' door of the shop in the spa town to retrieve another bad cup of coffee from a machine dispenser. In Ireland they mastered Guinness. There is no perfection in coffee here. Tombs dating from 3600 BC built by pagans, my ancestors, dotted the landscape like ghost estates in other parts of Ireland. I took off on my mountain bike in search of one I thought I'd seen from afar. Found only cow pats and more clints and grykes instead. It must have been my imagination or something else.

Sometimes we takes paths not knowing where they go or where they end but those are the ones that we are bound to take and should never be afraid of. They are usually the ones that unveil life's biggest adventures, lessons and surprises. I thought of this as I rambled with no map on an unknown path I found entering Burren National Park. The day was closing in and it had just stopped raining. The grey had disappeared and the sky began to get her colour back. Bright orange light of a quickly setting sun bathed everything around me in it's hues. I spun around wondering where to point my camera and realised suddenly I wasn't on my own anymore.

In the dying light of the last sunset of 2012 a year when everything seemed to change I found some majestic company to remind me of all that I have to be grateful for, for all the people, animals and earth I cherish and for all that is to come.