sonora2sonoma

In California, buildings are made of wood and collapse to the ground with age and neglect. In Ireland, they are made of stone and remain standing long after the roofs have vanished.

In Sonoma County, as the old chicken sheds slowly decay and return to the earth, nothing remains beyond a certain point, owing to the perishable nature of the building materials employed in their construction. In Ireland, the wooden parts of the buildings decay, but the stone portions endure for centuries. Were the builders of these Irish edifices longer thinkers, or were they merely utilizing the most readily available building materials at their disposal? In the big picture, I wonder if that really matters? The history revealed by the way these monuments inhabit their environments invigorates the senses in a way that no words could replicate.

And the implications concerning the relative impermanence of things American is difficult to ignore.

A guide on our tour of Ireland explained the particulars of one of the ancient sites we visited, at one juncture pointing out that, as he said, “the ancient people lived outdoors and sheltered inside, while today the people live indoors and journey outside.”

Not only do the buildings remain as silent testimony to Ireland’s history, but the songs of the Irish people represent a living history of their own, a record of what’s happened in the past that strongly resounds to the present day. If these folk persist in singing them, which there is every reason to expect they will, their songs will endure well into a future in which the digital age will be but a distant memory.

The people of Ireland are, by and large, friendly and possessed of a joyful disposition. Their history lives on in song, grounding them in rich tradition and with a deep and abiding respect for their ancestors and the travails they endured. They lived under harsh conditions, and this is reflected in their faces, which display, in some instances, a deep character seldom seen in our country.

There is something to be said for the richness of culture encountered in traveling to foreign lands. To be in a place with so much history, by which comparison our past here in America seems so shallow, is to become awakened to what really deep history feels  like: The comparison is sobering!