[The green fields of Ireland. Photo is mine.]

With a bog, and its buried contents, the past is no longer behind you, but palpably beneath your feet. A secret history is stacked just a few feet below the modern world in which you’re standing.

~~Terry Eagleton

It’s closing in on St. Patrick’s Day and since I will be quite busy in the next few weeks, I thought I’d put out this long-planned post.

This little story I’m about to relate; it isn’t something I tell very often. Nothing bad happens, more or less, and everyone that was with me that day is still living, except for two people: my father and my uncle. This is how I remember it:

August 1984

I was about to begin a year as an exchange teacher in Dorset, England. I was busy meeting people, co-teachers and such. My exchange partner flew to New York leaving me without much to do. I had a week to kill so I made my way to Ireland to join my father and uncle Jack while we did a brief tour that was to end at the Egan Clan Reunion.

The three of us were in Culleens visiting our closest Irish relatives. Someone gave me a glass of Guinness and then someone else suggested that we take a walk through the fields to visit a dolman. We set off, at first walking a short distance along a lane and then cutting through the fields to the ancient rock structure. Our little party consisted of my father, Uncle Jack, a cousin and his daughter, Caroline. And me, of course, gripping the pint glass of stout in my right hand.

I could see the dolman in the distance as we made our way through the heather and gorse. We were all walking side by side. My father, uncle and my Irish cousin were engaged in a conversation. Caroline followed along, a little to the side and lagging behind. And, that’s when it happened.

I heard a scream, loud and scary. A girl’s shocking scream. I nearly dropped the pint glass. We all looked around. The girl was not in sight!

Without missing a beat, her father walked a few paces through the thick heather and bent over. I didn’t know what was happening. He reached down and spread the overgrown and overlapping heather, pushed it aside and reached down with his right arm. What happened next was not something one sees everyday. He pulled his daughter up and out of a hole she had fallen into. Her body, from the neck down, was black with muck. She had stepped into a ‘hidden’ abandoned trench where peat had once been harvested. I don’t want to think about what would have occurred if her father had not been alert enough to figure out what had happened to her.

She was shaken but fine.

Imagine that, falling into a trench that was filled with the blackest oozy muck? I’d prefer not to, actually.

[Mounds of drying peat alongside a trench (not visible). This is not the place where it happened. Photo is mine.]

Summer 2025

Mariam and I are driving along an empty highway, heading to Portumna. I stop to photograph an old cemetery. Very few cars are on this road, but I know a farm wagon passed not too long ago. I know that because I had noticed little brown chunks of brown clods were scattered on the shoulder and in the middle of the pavement. Being curious, I pulled over to examine them. I picked one up. It was dried peat, cut from a nearby bog. It had fallen from a truck on its way to being sold to anyone who still uses peat as a heat source.

[On my carpet in NYC. A leaf and the clod of peat I brought back from Ireland. Why the leaf? My way of illustrating where the peat comes from. Organic matter. Like a leaf. Photo is mine.]

That little lump of sod reminded me of something. Back in the day, I wrote an article and got it published. It was, I think, the first published item that I was paid for. Several hundred dollars. I rolled it over to purchase an Electronic Typewriter. Sort of like an ‘electric’ but different. Here’s is the article:

[The first money I earned was from this little article. Note the year. Illustration is mine.]

So, there I was, holding a ‘little bit of Ireland”, picked up from the empty road. It closed the circle of something I started in 1977, and is continuing through today. I wanted to be a writer then…I’m still trying.

That’s forty-nine years of pounding a keyboard. I’m glad to report that the Electronic Typewriter is long gone. I use an iMac now. The world is so different.

Oh, by the way. The little girl who fell into the trench is married, has children and owns and operates a pub in Enniscrone, Co. Sligo.

All this is my contribution to the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, still a few weeks away.

Slainte.