The Narrator

It was out of season and the gates were locked but we pulled the car off the road and climbed the fence, letting the night's fog envelop us, and the world vanish, and the pain disappear along with a thousand years. There are places you return too. Not the scenes of crimes, if you're smart. Not the scenes of triumphs either, for what would that be but a pale reflection, guaranteed to disappoint? But the places of sanctuary - where escape was made even momentarily real - those are timeless. Below us the waves read the insistent poetry of history. Above us a Bealtaine moon struggled to tint the sky orange. Briefly the wind rustled the grass, telling us to be quiet, to rest, to be at peace. (c) copyright 2010 by Ira Socol

"It is not closed because it is closed," the old man says, "it is just closed for your safety because of the rockslide." And so we, and everyone else, climb over or around the woodworks sealing off that path up the cliff and go, trekking up the equivalent of a ten-story building as we rise from mid-way above the Giants' Causeway to the top. There we breath more heavily than we should, and I light a cigarette, and we look down to this most incredible scene below us as the North Atlantic surges out of a breathtaking blue and then we look that way as mother sheep chase their new lambs across fields so green you know they have been painted by gods. "Ma'ahahahahah," the sheep bleats. "shusssshhh" the sea replies. We look back. From here you can see the Dunluce Castle and the White Rocks Beach and Portrush, and all the way beyond to the Donegal Highlands and Inishowen. Here the first Celts came as the last Ice Age ended, crossing fro...