Is páiste na farraige mé. Is I mí lúil ar bhád iascaireacht idir Inis Mór agus Ros a Mhíl a rugadh mé. Mi an t-uisce má chreideann tú i gcomharthaí na Sloidiaca. Táim comportach leis an bhfarraige ó thús mo shaol. Is í m’áit shabhálta í agus is aoibhinn liom a bheith ar an uisce.
We were inland children; we knew nothing of the tides or the ocean. The river running through our land is woven into our lives and we learn with our scrutiny, the depth of our experience outweighing the lack of width. We know our river is connected to an intricate pattern of lakes and bigger rivers
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” ― John O’Donohue The Liffey runs by our town but not through it. Running east to west it intersects the Naas/Dublin road at its northern end. Curving leisurely through the strand, it meanders past the old watering gates,
Our story is of creating our own waterside for nature, in 2018 we began the task of creating a community garden in our council estate in Rathcoffey, Co Kildare. There was about 1 and a half acres of waste ground lying idle and costing the council the earth to maintain, as a resident’s association we
‘We go for a walk down the Glen with mammy and daddy every day. We go on an adventure. We see lots of creatures. We saw a fish jumping to eat a fly. We saw little black eels swimming that look like worms. They are my favourite and the boatmen that swim very fast on
The first time we met she was winter-cold and grey. A chill wind furrowed her face. Her bones showed through broken skin and blunt teeth appeared amid a lather of foam. Even the sky was weeping, as if mourning her aged state. I passed by. Spring brought me back on another dark day with low
Curlews still and silent encroach, a soft curruuu in the distance, as you approach. The heron in patient stance, Stoic and poised, waits for frogs with determined glances. Oyster catchers all black and white, their orange beaks stab like sharp knives, as they plunge for their lives. Lugworms burrowed under sand, fat, pink and frilly,
“Okay Michael, let’s go” said my father picking up an old hessian sack and heading out the back door. I followed. We were heading to the Bunduff rocks, on the edge of the Atlantic ocean, near Mullaghmore in North Sligo. We were heading to do some fishing for Ballan. Conditions were ideal, dull but not
I grew up in the heart of the country within a whisper of the longest river in Ireland. The Shannon known as the “wise river” meandered through eleven counites almost separating the East and the West. Electricity had been connected to our house in the very early nineteen sixties but the running water inside and
Ever since I was a young boy my Daddy and also my Grandparents have taken me fishing. My grandad is 85 and granny is 82. They live near me and we regularly travel to lakes in Roundwood. I caught my first fish there when I was only 3. We were in a boat and I
Over the past thirty years I would visit a favourite stretch of shore line on Gweebarra bay. This bay is where the Gweebarra River curves around before reaching the sea. I would cross the most beautiful field on a hill with a view upriver and across to Dooey and the headland beyond and as far
I prayed that the Lord would keep my children safe as I lay in the ambulance. Soon I would leave the green fields of North County Dublin behind, to enter the suburbs of the spreading city. What would await me there and why was I feeling so ill? I stared apprehensively through the window, as