Word: irelanders
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Just then, the skies opened up. Again. On this summer day in the east of Ireland, rain came in fitful spurts, cheekily alternating between mist and showers, drizzle and downpours. Sopping gorse, heather, and sedges; river crossings; and the occasional boggy misstep helped to ensure an even drenching, from top to bottom, as my companions and I wound our way up into the Wicklow peaks...
...comes to Ireland for the weather, I'd been told over and over. Not for nothing has precipitation preoccupied Irish literary luminaries from Joyce (“It would rain for ever, noiselessly. The water would rise inch by inch…covering the monuments and mountain tops...”) to Frank McCourt (“Great sheets of rain gathered to drift slowly up the River Shannon and settle forever...”). But in July and August, I'd also been told, one could realistically hope for tolerable weather—even occasionally beautiful days...
Cloudbursts are the least of the aqueous troubles in Ireland, however: Since March, a cryptosporidium parasite has rendered the tap water in Galway County (my home base for the summer) unusable. Bottled-water profit margins have surged, the Archbishop of Tuam has sought an alternative source of holy water, and I've become accustomed to treating water with a stanch mixture of fear and vexation...
...then, to willingly venture into surroundings that would leave my feet sopping with swamp matter and the rest of me saturated with other strains of sogginess. As I slogged forward once more, after squashing my foot back in my sneaker, a part of me scoffed at the allure of Ireland's natural beauty. Of the many odes to the Irish landscape, most must have been composed by those with dry feet, in a heated room, far removed from the terrain and the elements...
...transformative effect that inevitably accompanies life abroad is not unlike the elements in Ireland. Insight can come in droplets, dashes, steady cascades, and bursts and deluges. Some lessons and memories can be shaken off, but the total effect of the experience stays with you forever, clinging like the smell of stale must...