An island village

GEMS TO EXPLORE The monk’s fishing hut, built over the Cong River on the former grounds of Cong Abbey.  Pic: Michael Kingdon

Moss creates a feeing of real rain forest in Cong, softening that surround of sound

Country Sights and Sounds
Michael Kingdon

A fragment of mist rose from the Cong River as a twisting, writhing spectre, to catch and reflect the cream of morning. It rose as a curtain, broadened from bank to bank, and ran cold across my face as it rode a moment of upstream breeze. A musical riffle turned at the bridge, to become a chuckle carried seaward, far from my ears.
There are moments – and places – where we lose sense of time, not in the ordinary way, in that we arrive late for lunch, but as here where even centuries fall away. The forest is the same as ever it was, or nearly so. The stone blocks of abbey, bridge and more, cut and hewn, dragged, wrestled and placed near a thousand years ago, give silent testimony to the bruised and leathered hands of those who toiled here. I wonder if they laughed, and at what?
As for the river, broad and swift as it is, it is hard to understand how such weight of water could arise from a series of springs just a few minutes walk from here. Yes, in winter the Cong Canal spills overground from Lough Mask; when the rain stops the canal will run dry but the river will not, and then the mysterious upwelling, that strange subterranean flow, will be the sole input, as it was in all history.
This morning the song of early birds filled the air. Familiar voices one and all, each hung longer about the trees, about the low, fleshy leaves of laurel that fill gaps beneath oak and birch and line the water’s edge.
Moss clings to everything, covering riverside rocks and low branches with an insulating blanket of green to create the impression of a real rain forest and to soften that surround of sound.
Amid the ferns, the mossy trunks, lichen covered rocks and birdsong I found a place to rest.
How long since I found the time to properly sit? The notion of it stirs an odd, restless feeling within the breast, so that only with effort the need to keep moving and be busy can be dispelled.
Admonition comes in the form of an old proverb: ‘Two trees are needed, one with a seat and one without. Sit, then, beneath the one and gaze upon the other’. It is worth persevering, and reward soon comes.
Watch that mist shift almost imperceptibly, softening shadows, melding shades and hues, until the whole becomes as a watercolor produced by the finest artist, a living, breathing picture, the calmness of which soothes a path for anxious thoughts to leave the mind.
It doesn’t take a great deal of quiet before the rest of the world begins to forget we are here.
Today, the first visitors were the blue tit pair, flitting about the branches overhead. He makes a show of feeding and pretends to find a tasty morsel. ‘See, see see!’ cries he, in his thin little voice, and the moment she falls for his ruse away he goes, feigning indifference – or do I have them confused and it is she who is hard to please?
It is now that all birds are at their best, with colors that catch the eye and a jaunty edge to all they do. Chaffinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, linnet and siskin, redpoll – we have a happy surfeit of finch-birds, each male with his own song and his own behavioral and feeding niche. Interspecies squabbling is rare and barely seen away from the bird table. Out here in the woods there is room for all.
I hear voices raised, then laughter. I have a friend who’s laughter burned when alive, now burns again, though cold, whenever called to mind. I hear it in the leaves, in the rain when it comes, in the pulse of water at the monk’s hut and in the private joke shared by lovers whose voices carry further than they know. It springs from the heart, bright and warm as the sun, to wash at the rock we become without touch.
Laughter is of serious concern. We should give it more attention.
Cong is unique. It is very much an island village, surrounded by water. Yet one may drive east to west with eyes only for the road to Galway and pass it by. Cong, where we cannot but be glad, is a fine place to explore and perhaps the perfect place to light the fire within.

Michael Kingdon formerly wrote these columns under the pseudonym John Shelley. A naturalist and keen fisherman, he lives close to the shores of Lough Carra.