| The Joe Horgan Column By Joe
Horgan
There is something special, perhaps even more so at this time of year,
about taking a walk down an Irish country lane. As winter comes and the
evenings suddenly chill the little back roads seem more alive than ever,
with birds gathering to leave or to roost and leaves falling all around.
Walking along them in the quiet or as dusk gathers across the sky is to
feel a simple pleasure, to feel lucky to be here.
There are still plenty of these grass-down-the-middle byways in Ireland
where a view of the countryside will suddenly open up or an old tumbledown
cottage will suddenly lean out. Sometimes I have walked them at dawn as
the fox is going home across the field or a huge hare is darting away and
it is like the world is waking up around you. At these moments, on these
lanes, the sound of Ireland is like it was for generations before us; birds
and clouds, wind in the trees, cattle. A car engine from a few miles away
will carry but it is going, going, gone and you are alone again. It is your
own footsteps that sound, that carry.
Of course I have none of the association with these byways that others
might have. I have no memory of walking them in poverty or hunger. I have
no recollection of wanting to escape the social stagnation they may have
represented. I have no way of knowing who walked them dreaming only of fleeing
them, who thought anywhere away from them was the only place where life
could be lived. In the evening light or the sweet ending of the day I am
the romantic dreamer imposing my own notions on them. But as I walk the
next bend or see a star in the sky or a moon rising this city boy will allow
himself that.
Of course there is change and change, as they say, is part and parcel
of life. But in Ireland change comes rapidly and indiscriminately. Many
a country lane cannot now be strolled along with carefree ease, for daydream
too much and that 4-wheel drive bowling round the corner will take you with
it wherever it is rushing to. As Ireland becomes more and more suburban
one of the consequences is the cars that now hurtle along these country
lanes and because the suburban animal is often a commuter these cars fly
by just at those times at the beginning and end of the day when the lanes
are dreaming most.
In many ways one of these Irish lanes are now as much outposts of suburbia
as they are the dreamer’s rural idyll. Suddenly a house, huge, stark and
shining will appear newly cut into the Irish countryside. Old hedgerows
will have been torn out and fresh, bright stone adorns a wide entrance for
the cars that make living in the countryside possible for all those who
work and shop elsewhere. The odd thing about the houses of these new Irish,
with their plethora of en-suite bedrooms and electronic gates, is that their
appearance matches in many ways the mental furniture of those inside them.
They often as not live on these lanes in a geographical sense only.
Of course what these lanes and byways are worth purely in themselves
is impossible to quantify. That they may have some intrinsic value in just
being the ancient ways of man and beast across Ireland is not going to cut
much ice with the mentality of the soulless souls now calling the shots.
How could you make them understand that these lanes are more than merely
traffic routes? What price tranquillity and dreaming to a generation reared
on investment properties and SUVs?
For all of us, we can only hope that our children will know the peace
and texture of a country road. This is not a paean to the past or a lament
for some imaginary country where the poor were happy to dance at the crossroads.
It is instead a suggestion that as human beings we might well have greater
needs than knowing who has won Big Brother or having access to a supermarket
that now stays open 24 miserable hours a day. It is a realistic suggestion
that all this car dependent, rabid development is deeply unsustainable in
a world where the oil is running out and the climate changes drastically
year by year. It is in hope that Ireland will keep something of itself and
that people living here will still have the chance to think and dream and
be something in their lives instead of consumers. It is a belief that some
of this precious country should be for people and not for dreary, sweating
profit.
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