Bliain - Part 7

Part seven of my project to make a photograph every day for a full year, or bliain in Irish. Find Part 6 here.

16th March



Dewdrops on a sycamore bud that’s ready to burst. A heavy fog settled in over the hill behind home last night and left everything soaked this morning. The sun was trying to break through while I was making this image, and though that filtered brightness isn’t particularly obvious in the photo it really brought out those droplets. Without them this image would be a lot less interesting. They can of course be easily recreated for photographers by spraying your subject with misted water, but it’s far more satisfying to wait until that happens for real. The next few days will surely see the first leaves of this tree emerge. I know we’ll get plenty of cold and unsettled weather yet but it’s probably safe to say that winter is over.

17th March



A very experimental image from a morning in the hills. With the sun shining directly over this boggy terrain the little pools of water were catching the light like so many mirrors in the dark ground. Turning the focus of the lens far short of the ‘correct’ position turned all those small points of light into silver coins, and transformed the scene into an impression rather than an accurate portrayal. I’ve seen this technique used to good affect before, but generally with artificial lights at night. It was nice to find an opportunity to use it in a natural scene. Whether or not I’ll still like it in time to come I don’t know, but it’s good to try different things out now and again.

18th March



For most of the past few days the immediate area around home has been under a thick blanket of gloomy fog, while just over the hill to the south the sun has been shining. Such localised weather isn’t particularly uncommon in West Kerry but that doesn’t stop it from being fascinating. Unfortunately I’m on the side that generally gets the less pleasant kinds of conditions, so I’ve been appreciating that fascination from the sunnier side of the hill recently. It was while enjoying the brightness along the coast that I was surprised to find plenty of scurvy grass in bloom. The almost wintry weather at home lately made the sight of these coastal wildflowers all the more unexpected, and pulled my mind out of this strange and seemingly eternal dark season (is it the pandemic?!) and back into the present. Spring is marching relentlessly on, and though I’ve no doubt I could read back over these daily entries and find plenty of references to it for the last while, I keep getting the feeling like it’s come about all of a sudden. Scurvy grass is a member of the Brassica family, like so many of its tamed relatives such as cabbage and broccoli. It’s edible, though the flavour is apparently very strong and similar to horseradish, which is enough information to keep me from trying it. It’s the first of a number of wildflowers that I associate with summer by the sea to come into bloom. Others include sea thrift, birds foot trefoil and kidney vetch, and cushions and tufts of all these bright and cheery plants often appear side by side. They exist in my mind only on bright days of sun sparkle on blue sea, bordering a warm hollow in the long grass to lie back in and listen to gulls and skylarks calling out the summer. Bring it on.

19th March



The sun finally burned away the fog of the past few days and shone brilliantly in a blue sky til night came on. The spring equinox is coming up, the time when daylight and nighttime are of equal length. At this time the sun sets due west, the midpoint between its summer peak in the northwest and its winter trough in the southwest. The doorway of Gallarus Oratory faces pretty close to west so I went down to see if I could see the unimpeded sun shine in through the opening. Alas, I’m a few days early (the door appears to be a little north of true west) but it was lovely to see the long beam of light shining in at an angle at least, and cast the shape of the open doorway across the north and then the east wall. Somebody had left what looks like some sort of offering since I was last in here. Though this is a Christian site I like to think the stick and little jar (there must have been a candle or some flowers in it at some stage?) were put there to bask in the last of the light. It seems a very pagan appreciation of the sun as life-giver, rather than the son of god as sin forgiver, but then, the stories of Christianity are very much based around the framework of earlier pagan beliefs. It’s nice that such an ancient site of worship can accommodate and be meaningful to various different viewpoints.

20th March



I have far more interesting images from this enchanted morning, but given how today is the equinox I can’t resist the symbolism of this scene in a collection of photos spanning the full cycle of a year - half light and half dark, with a rising sun signifying the advance of daylight over night for the next six months. I didn’t actually realise the date until later in the day, but it made this morning’s incredible sunrise, and the night leading up to it, feel all the more special. After getting home from Gallarus yesterday evening I went straight to bed, lay there awake for two hours, and decided to just get up again and do without sleep. I had hoped to get a few hours rest before a night on the hills. The chances of another cloud inversion seemed high, and I was joining a friend on Mount Brandon in the early hours. I could sleep later in the week. In the past I had seen plenty of cloud inversions and plenty of night skies from the heights of the hills, but never both together. So it was surreal to turn around at times while walking up the mountain and notice that a low fog had formed since we started in the clear air, and it seemed to be rising at roughly the same pace as we were, as if it had been waiting for us to arrive. For the next few hours we sat in perfect windless stillness as the night sky passed overhead, occasionally punctuated by shooting stars, all while the peaks to our south disappeared and reappeared as a flowing sea of cloud rose and fell by mechanisms so unknown to us as to be mythical. A lightening of the sky in the east told of the coming sun, and we made our way to the summit of this holy mountain, the only one clear of cloud for as far as the eye could see. Even the Reeks, most of which are higher than Brandon, were covered over. It seemed impossible that we existed in the only pocket of clear air in all of southwest Munster. Even the cloud east and west seemed higher than the summit, but it stayed away at a distance, so there was nothing but blue sky overhead. I was sure the level would rise with sunrise, as it often does, and it did a little, but still the peak of Mount Brandon stayed clear, while the warm, early light lit the slopes and licks of mist ran like rivers over the ridges. Between the lack of sleep and the sensory overload of natural wonder it was all a little dumbfounding. I joked that I must have fallen asleep the previous evening after all, and that soon my alarm would rip through this dream like a bomb going off. It would have seemed more likely than everything we got to see and experience in that half a day in the hills.

21st March



Having started this project the day after the winter solstice and having now passed the vernal equinox it must be the case that a quarter of a year has come and gone since I first took that sunrise swim on the 22nd of December. By chance I started into the second quarter of the year in the water again, or on it at least, in the comfort of my kayak. The calm weather is set to break after today and I was keen to make the most of the slack winds, so myself and Jaro headed out from the pier at Baile na nGall and spent a few hours pottering around the eastern coast of Smerwick Harbour. This sea cave sits under the cliff walk leading north from the village. If you’ve ever strolled out over that lovely coastline you’ll have passed directly over this chasm, which is only held up by three or four meters of ground spanning the steep walls framing this scene. If that thought is unsettling maybe walk the last few hundred meters to the old watchtower a bit quicker than you normally would. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it...

22nd March



A seashore scene on a shelly section of beach. You can see how the ground here isn’t made up of grains of sand but of broken bits of shells and tiny pebbles. Note also the little casts of sand which must have amassed in the empty shells and then been dumped out in their shape later on. I find it fascinating how these items of roughly the same size, shape and weight get gathered together like this, rather than scattered over a huge area. Though I suppose in wilder weather the shore is arranged more chaotically, and this scene is symptomatic of the recent calm seas. I was in Spain a few years ago staying in my campervan at a quiet beach south of Valencia that had very distinct lines of pale white shells strung out along the hide tide mark. One full moon night I went out to the water and the shells were glowing so brightly against the darker sand, like a wavy trail of lights leading away along the coast. I must try and recreate the experience on a beach near to here some time. The Mediterranean sun does a much better job of bleaching the Spanish seashells white than the Irish climate is capable of, but I’d say this particular patch could be noticeably bright on a full moon night. It was certainly bright enough to draw me to it from a few hundred metres away while walking the strand today.

23rd March



Today’s image is also focused on a curious collection of similar coloured seashore debris, this time in the form of these rounded blocks of quartz. They form a nice little patch to match the sea stack in the centre of this quiet cove, though all the other rocks nearby make the scene feel a bit cluttered to me. Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable evening out, even if the images from the camera felt disappointing after I’d gotten back home. After a miserable morning the sun was out in force for the afternoon and I loaded up my bike with a stripped down camera bag and tripod and pedaled west for a no emissions sunset photo mission. I keep saying it over and over again but living in a beautiful place is so so important to me, especially during this pandemic. There’s something very satisfying about not having to get in the car to get somewhere scenic. Car journeys can often be so meaningless, just a means to an end. But walking or cycling to somewhere turns the journey into a part of the experience, something to be savoured as much as the scrambling around in rocky coves and the sunset at the beach.

24th March



The day got away from me today and I resorted to this simple photo from the back garden to tick the box. Once you get going it’s rarely difficult to find something worth photographing, but some days it can be hard to get going at all. This is an ash tree, still bare of foliage, and it will be for awhile yet. The sycamore I photographed last week has plenty of leaves out at this stage, but ash is always slow to come into leaf. Ash trees are currently facing enormous hardship in the form of a fungal disease known as ash dieback. Consider how frightening the COVID-19 pandemic has been for most humans, even with a numerically low death rate of around 0.02%. Now consider how ash dieback will likely kill around 80% of ash trees in Europe in the coming decades. That kind of level of population devastation in humans is the stuff of dystopian fiction, but it is common (and the best case scenario in some cases) among countless species of plants and other animals thanks to modern human activities. The fungus responsible for ash dieback likely came in on timber or tree saplings imported from Asia, where it is native and doesn’t cause nearly as much harm because it evolved alongside the myriad other species in its ecosystem. If the idea of invasive species being a threat to wildlife was hard to grasp for people pre-2020 then it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand by now. Though I fear plenty of that understanding will be lost in xenophobic nationalism and all the other daft forms of hatred that stem from the silly human constructs such as race and religion. I am more baffled every day by how few people realise the reality of the world we live in, that economies and nations and the human-centric worldview are just ideas we’ve invented, embedded in the wider actuality of a planet governed by physical and biological limitations, which in our blinding exceptionalism we’re pushing to points beyond which most life won’t be able to survive. We could choose to not be like this. We invented so much of the ideas and attitudes that are the cause of so much harm. We could invent other ones, based on the reality of how the world works instead of outdated notions rooted in an inflated sense of superiority. All of the solutions to the major problems facing human and most other life already exist. The thing that’s missing is the change in our values and a genuine willingness to embrace that change.

25th March



Ramson, or wild garlic, coming into flower. I was amazed by how small the patch of light falling on this scene was, a spotlight pleasingly filtered through the woodland canopy to isolate only the emerging petals. Such a simple thing, but if I tried to go back and recreate this scene, I couldn’t. The sun will be in a different position tomorrow, the stem will have moved, the flower will have opened a little more. On a grand scale these differences are imperceptible, but in the shrunken world of close detail every little change has huge implications. This plant is one of my favourites, not only because it’s beautiful and a sign of spring, but also because its leaves are tasty and make for a simple introduction to foraging. It’s best to pick them before the plant flowers, but there’s still time for that, especially further up the country where the season comes in a little later. Below is a simple wild garlic pesto recipe. If you’re not used to plant identification or gathering wild food then best ask somebody who knows what they’re at to help you. And as with all foraging, don’t take any more than you need (or all of something if there’s only a small amount) and don’t trample your way through a woodland floor destroying what’s growing on the ground. There is something very special about gathering your own food from wild places that cannot be got from buying in a shop. The idea of food as a living being in a habitat rather than a packaged product for consumption really changes the idea of what it means to eat. To quote April Bencze – “I think of what it means to place the life-force of a being into your mouth, swallow, and absorb it into your body. I cannot think of any being more worthy of reverence than the ones I am in relationship with in this way.”

50g young ramson leaves (wash them before using)
25g cashews (or pine nuts)
180ml olive oil
40g grated parmesan
A pinch of salt and pepper

Blend all of the above and store in a sterilized jar. It should last between two and three weeks. Its garlicky, but not overpoweringly so. For me, it’s one of the two tastes of spring (the other being nettle soup.)

26th March



From the delicate and tender greening of the woodland floor to the raw carnage of a coastline battered by heavy swell. This past winter has been one of the more mellow ones since I came to live in West Kerry. February was shite but it wasn’t stormy as such, just consistently breezy and dull enough to seem mind-numbing. March hasn’t been too bad at all, with a nice mix of everything, and no long periods of bad weather or any particularly big storms. Nonetheless it’s still not uncommon for storms that died somewhere out in the Atlantic to send their swell this direction, and today there was plenty of it rolling unstoppably towards West Kerry. The small headland here is about 20m high, which gives some sense of the wave that struck to leave the waterfalls pouring down the broken cliffs in this scene. After getting home I looked up an old bit of video footage from 2016 for comparison and it made today’s conditions look almost benign. I love to imagine what it would be like to be on seas like that (aside from utterly terrifying), to be standing in the trough between two huge swells or on the mountaintop of an enormous wave that’s just about to break. It’s always so hard to gauge these things from shore. Even when you can hear the roar as waves collapse on themselves and feel some of their energy coming up through the ground they’re crashing against it must only be a fraction of the wild energy that’s whirling around out on the water itself.

27th March



One side of a zip, or the straightened out lower jaw of a shark, or a saw perhaps. So many similes for this cool cave feature. I’m not sure fully what’s going on here but it seems like there is limestone in the ground somewhere above this small coastal cave and it’s leaching calcite down through the ceiling to form these mini stalactites where the water drips and leaves behind the mineral deposit. I’ve been in plenty of limestone caves (they often lend themselves to rock climbing) but never seen something quite like this, where features typical of steep limestone are present on a different type of rock. I spent more than an hour in this damp, dank hole in the coast and it felt like twenty minutes. I love sea caves for all their gothic architecture, strange algal and mineral colours and spooky moods. For people like me who like the idea of getting to know an area well there’s something particularly cool about getting inside the landscape, and seeing and experiencing it from within. I have a few more compositions I like from here that I’ll have to go back and shoot again for inclusion in this project on another day.

28th March



Though it can be hard to convince yourself of it, there’s often little better to do on a wet, miserable, windy day than get the waterproofs on and head out to the hills to see the streams in spate. River kayakers are particularly fond of these days of heavy rain, and are probably the only people to get excited about the kinds of forecasts most people dread. But even if being carried along a raging stream of cold water in a small plastic boat isn’t your thing, it can still be very enjoyable to go walking on days like this. When you can accept getting soaked as part of the deal it’s actually quite fun. I spent four enjoyable hours wandering around a mountain valley near to home today, following the rushing rivers upstream, admiring waterfalls and steep tributaries gushing from the sodden hills. And then I came home and had a shower and it was all the more glorious to be under hot water instead of cold.

29th March



Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage. The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The Irish is glóiris, which is much easier, though I’m not sure what it means, if there’s anything resembling a direct translation at all. This is a common sight in damp shady places at this time of year, usually fairly conspicuous as big, bright yellow-green mats on the ground. I was drawn to this composition by the water droplets on the grass, though now that I’m looking at the finished image I’m wondering if they’re just a distraction from the flowers that are supposed to be the subject of the photograph.

Find Part 8 here