But because Newgrange was there and wasn't going to go away I decided to go for a coffee instead. I'd like to emphasise here that I've never neglected the importance of having time to go for coffee. After all, the 'coffee morning' is a significant instrument of gossip, one of Ireland's most important forms of social control. But Newgrange, well I'd been there before, a number of years earlier and I just felt incredibly drawn by the place.
Newgrange is what they call a 'passage grave', and it being over 5,000 years old, one can only speculate that it might have had some sort of religious significance. Maybe that's one of the things that draws me to it - the fact that we can only wonder what the whole thing is about. How did people who only lived for about 30 years manage to gather stones from distant places and erect this massive building, aligning it with the rising sun so that the sunrise can flood the chamber at solstice? When they simulated the solstice light from within the chamber that last time I'd been there, I remember feeling overwhelmed. So I wanted to go again. And now that I don't live there and it's far away and almost inaccessible, I did go. Last Saturday.
There was an old bokety van that left from outside the tourist office and charged 17 euro return. Not bad for a post celtic tiger trip, and the bus itself made me feel like Ireland in the good aul bad aul 80's: semi unprofessional, friendly, possibly illegal and somebody other than the driver is making a few bob out of it.
As soon as I boarded the excuse for a bus, I hear 'hello, are you also travelling alone?' It's one of those annoying solo tourists who like to latch on to people.
'Well, em, no, not travelling as such, just taking a day out to go on a spiritual journey.'
'Spiritual?'
'Yeah, I've been here before and I find it an incredibly spiritual place.'
I politely hear that she's from Holland, staying in the city centre and that she loves Ireland. I politely tell her that she looks Irish with her red hair - because gingers who visit Ireland tend to feel special.
And then I move to the back of the bus, excusing myself with a book. Some young Americans get on and a moody couple with a lunch box (I'm guessing Germans).
I've been here a few times before so I'm not surprised to hear that there will be a two hour wait until we can do the next tour. I visit the tourist centre and the gift shop, pay some humungous price for some mini slice of quiche and as big as the place is, I keep on seeing the ginger Dutch lady who I have decided I am not going to be nice to, as I am on a spiritual journey and not a tourist hosting mission.
It's about 3 or 4km to the actual site, so instead of waiting on the shuffle bus I decide to kill time and walk over. The smell of Spring trying to push it's way through the hard winter soil and lush landscape along the river Boyne is precious. As I approach the site, I begin to fill with wonder, awe, something that I can only explain as soul, I feel some sort of connection to the mystery of the past, to the things our ancestors knew and did that seem to have gotten lost along the way.
How did stone age women have babies without epidurals? Whatever they did, the population grew, so it was something that worked.
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| Walking across the lush fields to the site |
The sun - I realise that the sun is still as significant now as it was then - we just don't seem to notice that anymore. And I wonder about the soul. 5,000 years ago, when life was so visceral and short and survival based, what did those people know about eternity that got them building this passage grave. I feel overwhelmed.
But then something happens. I walk behind a big stone in my spiritual state, and yes, there she is - Dutch ginger lady, throwing up, and believe me, not in a ladylike throwing up way, but more in how I might have imagined our neanderthal ancestors to have done.
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| Light across the wintery sky. Newgrange on the left |
'Are you ok?'
'Oh, yes, thank you, just feeling a bit sick, but better now.'
I give her a paper hanky, then change my mind and give her the whole pack. She looks pale.
'Are you sure you're ok?' I ask again.
'Yes, thanks, I think it's just the stress of travelling alone and then the bus journey.'
There's a story there I tell myself, but I'm not going to ask to hear it, not when I'm on my damn soul searching one day retreat with half of it already in the back of a 15 year old red Ford Transit Van.
As we get our turn to go into the chamber she turns around and drops the whopper -
'So where is the spiritual part of all this, is it inside the chamber?'
'Oh, it's probably just me that finds it spiritual' I reply, offering her a Nurofen Plus the way you might hand someone a chewing gum.
And that's when I begin to like her. I realise that the soul and the spirit are endlessly personal and unique, and that only by finding that out like this, can I understand that other people must also find their spirituality in the strangest of places, and that here, in this light chamber, it might be only me who feels a sense of eternity, of peace, of mystery and of soul.
We head back to Dublin, and all I know is that I feel spiritually recharged. I feel kind again and have a newborn energy to cope with the worldly things around me.
Somehow, being in that chamber makes me feel that some part of me will never die. I'm polite as I disembark the bus.
'Goodbye now, enjoy your holiday in Ireland.'
'Goodbye, you should visit Holland sometime, you would love the Windmills.'
'Possibly' I reply, and when I don't mutter fuck off under my breath, I realise that
I am truly on a spiritual high.
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