Stendahl for the hillside

Stendahl syndrome, or Florence Syndrome is condition in which a person swoons or feels nausea after seeing too much art.  People have experienced it, scientists are studying it.  I think I had a version of it today from the excess of beauty and history and expansion of my spirit today.

Today was the most perfect day.  It started with a sunny and soft morning in Portmagee, where I played my guitar in the harbor and watched the sea birds.  Then we drove over the bridge to Valencia Island for a walk up to the abandoned settlement at the top and a look at the Skellig Islands in the distance.  Pam and I elected not to make the long walk to the top, but stopped about half an hour in to sit on a rock and enjoy the views from there.  That is more my speed.  Walk, then sit and look and enjoy.  We could see the Skelligs as a kind of dark mystery in the distance, and we watched a small boat from Portmagee come out and lower some nets.  The heather and gorse was blooming in fits here and there around us.

After the others rejoined us, Mark drove us to another part of the Island where we scrambled across a field to see an early Christian burial site with a marked stone called an Ogham.  Mark talked to us excitedly about these 5000 year old structures, and I was delighted we have such an informed and enthusiastic guide with us.  The real hit of the hill, though was the dolman, a stone structure found throughout Ireland in different forms, thought to be a burial entrance.   They are generally made of three to five stones with a flat stone across the top.  Imagine hauling that big top stone up or down a steep hill to place it.  Most of what we understand about the dolmans is speculation; nothing is certain about their mythic or ritualistic intent.  Some are built into hillsides, but ours was more or less exposed.  According to Mark, the tops of them are always set at precise angles, and they face the same direction wherever they are built.

Cool as that 5000 year old structure was, the hit of the day was when we went offroading to the top of a hill that was covered, COVERED in heather and gorse.  The view was incredible, and the remains of an equally ancient settlement were around us, but the tumble of purple and yellow blanketing the hillside was pure joy.  I wanted to roll in it.  Fortunately I did not, as gorse is thorny and rough.  We have seen more spectacular things on this trip, but nothing has thrilled me like that little mountainside.  I was giddy after the walk up there, and full of energy and compassion for the world, but also slightly woozy.  I took a zillion photos, but none of them capture the feeling of being in all that color at the peak of the world and the edge of the sea.