May 28, 2022
Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones.
They’re the modern stone age family.
From the town of Bedrock,
They’re a page right out of history.
Fred and Wilma in a diesel Benz, that’s Cathy and me.
Cathy was our pilot, cool, calm, focused on the center line, deftly adjusting her exterior mirrors slightly down so as to track how close to the edge of the road the Benz road, darting in and out of roundabouts like Jackie Stewart in the chicane.
Rob, the navigator? Not so much.
When he wasn’t jumping out of his seat, convinced that his side of the car was leaving the road when in fact it wasn’t, or when he wasn’t searching for the right change, even the right currency, to pay the M1 toll, he was swearing at the Benz’wizzywig navsat guidance system and trying to find a damn volume button on the high tech touchscreen—what happened to simple knobs?– so Cathy could hear the lady on Google Maps help them find a friggin cash machine.
Let’s listen in, shall we:
Cathy: Talk to me, Goose.
Rob: Okay . . . there’s a roundabout coming up in .3 kilometers.
Cathy: How long’s a kilometer.
Rob: I think it’s like a mile. Want me to look it up?
Cathy: (silence)
Rob: If I leave Google Maps to use Google I may lose Google Maps.
Cathy: (silence)
Rob: Think of it as mileish……
Cathy: (silence)
Rob: Okay . . .this one’s a tricky one. We’re coming in at six o’clock; you’re going to be leaving at 12:00 . . . or is it 3:00? . . . no it’s 12:00 . . . no 3:00, it’s definitely 3:00
Cathy: (silence)
Rob: So, you need to look over your right shoulder for cars from your right, then ease into the center lane of the circle to avoid the 9:00 which will take you to Dundalk . . . we don’t want to go to Dundalk . . . then as we whiz by 12:00 you need to look over your left shoulder for traffic coming from Dunleer . . . we don’t want to go to Dunleer either . . . then ease back into the outside lane and leave at 3:00 heading for Blackrock
Cathy: ( long silence)
Rob: I wonder if that is where the expression “bad day at Blackrock came from?”
Cathy: (longer silence)
Rob: Want me to look it up?
You get the idea.
Newgrange is a magical place. I know this because a sharpy from Texas . . . you know the kind; the guy who asks questions to impress, not to illicit information . . . this guy listened to our guide explain that some archeologists believe the spiral patterns in Neolithic art may have been aided by mind altering drugs or a belief in magic . . . and then asked “what was the magic?”
Long silence.
Then the tour guide looked at him and calmly responded “if I told ye how tee magic worked, it wouldn’t be magic, now would it.”
I decided not to ask questions.
Newgrange is in fact magical. You pass through a beautifully designed visitor center, itself shaped like the spiral pattern common in Neolithic art (and in Cathy’s doodling, I might add), walk over a footbridge spanning the River Boyne, the breeze blowing, birds warbling, and then take a bus first to Knowth (pronounced “nowth) which dates back to 3200 BC, then to Newgrange. You learn how the builders spent 50 years transporting large rocks weighing several tons by boat from the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin, over 70 km away, and somehow (some think using slippery seaweed harvested 20 km away) pushed the giant stones up a steep hill to build the perimeter
We’re talking over 5000 years ago. That’s 800 years before the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge. Go back as much time before the sweet baby Jesus as after him.
Imagine, just imagine, you’re a grad student in 1969 with dark framed glasses in an Oxford cloth buttoned down collar shirt, about our age, and you are the first to discover the opening through which sunlight entered the inner chamber on the morning of the Winter Solstice and you know, you just know, that you may work the rest of your life and never be part of a discovery like that again.
This is the view looking up from the inner chamber at Newgrange. (I stole this from Google; you’re not allowed to take photographs inside) That’s 200,000 tons of rock, carefully cantilevered so precisely that scientists can confirm that for over 5000 years the interior has been bone dry. Not one drop of Irish weather ever seeped in.
I’ve felt a tuning fork like tie to our primitive past only twice in my life. The first time was when I witnessed a total solar eclipse standing on a high school football field in eastern Oregon. The second time was yesterday, when standing in the inner chamber of Newgrange, holding Cathy’s hand, looking up at this sight above, our guide turned off the lights, turning the world so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and then recreated what it is like on the Winter Solstice when the rising sun slowly extends light down the narrow corridor precisely positioned for that moment in the year.
It was eerie.
We think of December 21 as the start of winter. The ancients knew it for what it was. The moment when daylight, and the warmth it brings, begins to grow longer.
Cathy and I decided Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, must have been optimists. They knew things will get better. The days will get longer. The sun will shine warmer.
Just wait.
"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" 