To every thing, there is a season…

The sun completes Inis Meáin. The island soaks it up; stone warmer to the touch, the water inviting, the ground made for shoeless feet. Everyone’s in great form, having earned the glory of summer by sticking out the winter. Throughout the summer, I felt an urgency to savour each day, to make good on the bargain struck by ancient gods and powerful forces that, in this place, winters would be endured and summers enjoyed.

That urgency is passed now; autumn is here and there’s a winter coming – another lap of the sun being clocked up. I’ve no great love for winter, but I do believe that it has an importance. That, like land, we too need fallow periods. That to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

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That urgency to savour each and every day had serious last-days-of-Irish-college energy about it. Fervent days one remembers all their life, spent in achingly beautiful places (themselves made heavenly by the sun), when no other place mattered, where the very best people were. A temporary place that tattooed itself on the mindset. Eachléim, Co. Mayo, 2001. Inis Meáin, Co. Galway, 2022.

The fervour had many fathers. The island itself, sunshine’s canvas. Delight, the by-product of living where surfaces shimmer. Even just the fact of summer, and the world like an opened flower; face to the sun, soul saturated. Being surrounded by scores of people on their holidays, their contentment contagious. The sensation of summer, poked awake by the sight of lobster pots, currachs, painted picnic benches and chips in the pub.

And, of course, two months of teachers’ holidays.

The visitors would often outnumber the residents on summer days, between returning islanders, day trippers and those who regularly decamp. Rarely was the pub subdued or quiet. If there was no craic in the pub, it was on someone’s decking or back stoop. The waft of a concertina or tin-whistle in the air. Several afternoons I popped to the shop for milk, and didn’t come home until dark. The boat was busy and the old pier buzzing, lively, peopled. Noised with the shrieks of kids jumping off the pier. We swimmers dried in the sun, as we gushed about how great all this was. Marvelling, some of us, at the fact of our lives being here.

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But summer is fading or faded – depending on the day – and autumn is to be felt now, as well as seen. There’ll not be long left of the blackberries, or the apples, though I was out picking today. The wee donkey is a teenager now, disinterested in my outstretched hand, and the sun is inching east. Ideas are being bounced around for what might fill winter evenings; clubs, parties, dinner evenings, classes. New songs are being road-tested for Friday nights. There’s been much talk of routine, and the amazing people we’ll all become when it’s established.

September is nice here; summer not fully gone, warmth in the water, landscape still alive. But there’s a gentle urgency too, because it will soon go. I feel no regret in that, for life here is a lesson on the certainty of time’s passage. The enchanted moments were always bonuses; never planned for, or deliberately sought out (like craic, looking for them is the surest way not to find them). What’s rare now is truly wonderful; a sea calm like glass, the twinkle of a lighthouse, sight of An Blascaod Mór.

Now, I won’t misrepresent bad-weather days either. This week, the season palpably changed – a fire or two put down, jackets seen, an evening or two wet – and there was a bit of a ‘meh’ feeling about. Yesterday was pure miserable and my legs felt heavier for that, and the hills higher. But then, today was immense; I spent the afternoon in technicolour, down the back of the island picking airní – or sloes – and gazing at Kerry. Nobody enjoys the bad weather, but nowhere better appreciates the good.

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Unpopular an opinion and all as it is, I think we need the winter; we need time to regenerate, time to draw on our own energy, do our own thing. In winter, the land has little external sign of activity but deep in the earth, it is busy regenerating. Humans need fallow seasons too – just in moderation, of course.

It’s a notion instinctive to a lot of us; online courses are hugely popular in winter, television series’ return, we do more at home. I go to bed earlier when the dark nights come in and I work on the kind of things that come from me; creating, learning, developing. So winter to me is for writing and starting new stories, enrolling in yet another Irish course, reading more and reading more again, exploring ideas, returning to half-thought thoughts, stretching, meditating – much of which fell by the wayside in summer when I was never home.

The idea of a season influencing my behaviour never crossed my mind before here. But seasons on Inis Meáin are concrete realities, not abstracts. And it’s no calendar that distinguishes them, but the weight of the sky and warmth of the stone, the first touch of morning’s air, and the feel of the water.

To be worked with, not against.

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And so, here we go again. Summer was marvellous and though it’d be better if it was always summer here, winter will bring certain benefits; the seisiún will be small and intimate, the assault of cold water will produce titanic highs, there’ll be dinners and the deepest conversations red wine can inspire. I’ll stay put here when I can, singing songs, reading books, warming my legs by the pub’s fire.

And dreaming of summer.

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Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, other posts can be found here – they’re mostly about Inis Meáin these days, but there’s stuff there about politics, home, rural living and other notions I took on given days. I’m on Twitter too, if you really like what you read!!