A Walk in the Mind

Photo by Rosie Dolan

By Heather Laird:

Third wave. My sister sends me a photo. 'Guess where?'. A muddy track. Two deep patterned lines made by tractor tyres. Straight initially and then a gentle bend. A slope down to the left and a low bank to the right. Twilight with orange light stark against black trees, one gloriously full, the others stunted or mere saplings. Light reflecting from a puddle. A nowhere, anywhere, for most. But not for me.

By the drain in the front yard and on towards the iron gate. In wellies of course. Past where the well once was on the right. My mother fetched water here when she first married into this Roscommon farm. Even when pregnant. The first of eight born nine months after the wedding. Reluctant to tell my father’s mother, the matriarch. There was no problem with dates, but perhaps a bit quick. Should one get the hang of it so soon? Eight children in quick succession in a house that my father grew up in as an only child. A sister’s too early birth brought on by a cow’s kick to my grandmother’s stomach. Not baptised but someone once told me that my grandfather and a neighbour buried her at night in a cardboard box in a local graveyard. Through the gate and on towards the stone drinking trough. Hours of fun while young watching the brother closest to me in age watch pond skaters walk on water. No, “watching” is too passive. There were experiments too, and I a willing assistant. A speck of dirt gently dropped on a skater, gradually increasing the weight to gauge the point at which its water-repellent feet would penetrate the surface, the point at which it would sink under its burden. Within sight of where the photo was taken and now I’m there. Pause briefly and breath. Wrong time of the year for primroses but the edge of the bank will burst with them in Spring. Then follow the track, but walk on the grass between the lines. Around the bend and out of the photo. 

Standing now where the same brother and I fell with the bales when the trailer tipped over. Remember exhilaration rather than pain so our landing must have been soft. Grab hold of a bale and ride it down if the load goes, we had been told. But if it had tipped the other way, it might have been different, over a hedge and down a hill, further to go. Up to the new hayshed. Heard a dog bark here once, from deep in the bales. Must have fallen through one of the gaps we were always warned about. Ran home sobbing. Farms are unsentimental places so was surprised that my father came back with me so quickly, pulling bale after bale away, curses more frequent with each one. So far down. I had time to make plans. What I would call the dog. Our future life together. Once released, we barely saw her. A flash of tawny-coloured hair and she was gone. From here, on out to the bog field. The edge of the farm. The thick brown black water in the drain. I think another brother fell in here once. One of the older ones I hardly knew growing up. 

Take another route back. Is this the spot where my father and eldest brother startled a hare and then crouched down in the grass to see if she would return, panting, “from whence at first she flew”? Or maybe it’s just where I saw a hare, much later. Cross wet fields, picking my steps to avoid the worst of the mud, until I come to the small hill topped with the fairy fort. Take in the view. My home town. The Shannon. Down the slope that is now planted with trees, through a gap and along a narrow path with a high bank to the right. We had a swing here once. Not a to and fro one. Circular. A stick tied in the middle by a rope to the branch of a tree on the bank. There was a knack to it. Putting too much weight on one side of the stick sent the other side up in the air. Once on, you reversed back up the bank as far as you could go and pushed off at an angle so that you swung out over the drop to the left of the path and back in to the other side of the tree. A horse. That’s what I pretended. Taking all the jumps. Winning the race. Go on Champion! You can do it, Beauty! 

Down a steep path to the back yard past where the dung hill was on the left. The old milking parlour is still here but now used for storage. An empty space where the creamery cans were kept. Cow manure, cheno unction and milk. The smells of childhood and home. And of my father’s jumpers. Once when travelling in Bavaria in my early twenties, I climbed over a fence into a field to sniff a cow pat. I was performing of course, doing mad stuff for others to see, but it was real – my pull to it. The day of my father’s funeral, I snuck away from the busy farmhouse and stood alone for a while in this yard with my eyes tightly shut, mooring myself. “Out beyond the iron gate on the way up to the new hayshed,” I message my sister.

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Heather Laird is a lecturer in English at University College Cork. She was raised on a farm in Co. Roscommon, Ireland. She is the author of a number of scholarly publications, including Subversive Law in Ireland, 1879-1920 (2005) and Commemoration (2018). She is an editor of Síreacht: Longings for another Ireland, a series of short, topical and provocative texts that critique received wisdom and explore the potential of ideas commonly dismissed as utopian.

Rosie Dolan, née Laird, is a hotelier and part-time photographer based in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ireland.