Years ago when I was living in France, I experienced a series of amazingly detailed dreams of West-Cork, mostly involving travels around the Beara peninsula, Schull or Glandore. Although I knew where I was in the dream, the odd thing was that I kept ending up on side roads I didn’t recognise, following twisting botharín to sights and views that could only be described as surreally breathtaking. West Cork is a beautiful place by any definition but, in a weird way, this felt as though I was seeing the landscape through a spiritual rather than a physical lens.
Aaaaaaaand I reckon, I’ve lost half of you out there by now!
Interestingly, the art of perceiving auras or chakras (and, no, this philistine has no real idea of the difference) with the naked eye has been around forever (and at least a few decades on a commercial basis). This also became a bit of a fad over in the States during the eighties, according to the late Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park fame). If you’re interested, he wrote a very pragmatic (he was medically trained at Harvard), funny and interesting chapter on it in his book ‘Travels’.
With respect to the dreams I experienced, these only occurred on an irregular basis and after a short period of two to three months, I never had them again. I’m pretty sure they were linked to a time of immense homesick because they were definitely of the “rose-tinted spectacle” variety. In the dreams, it was always sunny, warm, beautiful. In real life Ireland a single week of rain has an odd way of washing such tints away.
You don’t really need dreams of course – as long as you can get back on a relatively regular basis. Whenever I’m home, I make a point of driving up the Healy Pass, looking down on Glenmore and travelling around the whole Beara peninsula. I do it alone so I can draw it up in my head again whenever I want to, a kind of recharge to hold me over until the next time I’m back.
In New Zealand, Maori have a great word – tūrangawaewae – which literally means “a place to stand”. It’s a great concept that we don’t really have in English speaking countries and it refers to those places you feel especially connected to or empowered by. It doesn’t have to be your home or even where you come from. In that respect, Wellington is home (currently), Cork is where I’m from but Beara and West Cork will always be my tūrangawaewae. It just seems a bit of a shame there’s no similar English word to describe it.
