[Tirned Tinnu]

OH! Have I something to add here!
Have you ever walked a path that you know has not been trod by man or beast for thousands of years? I compare my trip to Ireland as such.
Here in the USA things are young. The forests have been chopped down and regrown, the paths Indians once took covered in tar and cement. I cannot feel the ancients! I cannot see their bodies walking thru the forests of new trees.
Once in a long while, if the night is right, in the Autumn, when the mists grow and the moon shines down ghostly through the clouds, sometimes I can see the spirits of Indians and colonists and soldiers walking silently. If you turn your head to check again for them, they are gone.
But when I walk in Ireland, the land calls up to me. The ground whispers constantly. The woods are shouting at me. The Mountains cry out, singing to me. They all tell of thousands of years of history. There were so many from the dawn of time until the moment that I set foot there, that the screaming of the Past is almost deafening. And yet...try to make clear the message, and all you hear is gone. For the rocks and the trees do not tell secrets there. They speak a different language, and I am too young to know it.

I made my way as a fiddler, and travelled only a bit. In that way, I saw the history. It's written in the faces of the people, in their singing and dancing, and in their very speech. I was quickly swallowed up by the locals. If I could have stayed, I would have. Sometimes I rue the day I came back to this young country, with its woods all scrubbed clean. But I will return, perhaps, next to Scotland, and I'd better bring earplugs, for I've got a feeling that it's more spirited than Ireland.

[ September 07, 2002: Message edited by: Tirned Tinnu ]