No guns. No snakes. With each step I take onto a crowded Luas tram in Dublin or briar patch on a horse and cattle farm in southeast Ireland, those two facts of where I am confuse — and then comfort — my brain.
I am in the third safest country in the world. My home country, the USA, just experienced its 404th mass shooting this year a couple of days ago. The only mass here is Sunday’s, down the narrow country road in a tiny village and in every other city, town and village in this land of my ancestors.
As rattlesnakes slither through the lavender fields where I WWOOFed in the High Desert of California (and snakes hide out almost everywhere else I was in the USA during my Round America with a Duck journey), I can take a step care-free here (stinging nettles aside).
I travel mostly car-free, too, despite not having my folding bike with me, on double-decker buses, scenic trains along the Irish Sea, and borrowed bikes (I’m currently on my third in the last week). And when I am in a car, I’ve even gotten used to traveling in the right-hand passenger seat with my lovely hosts as they take me to talks about soil health and foraging, and even a car boot sale (flea market). (The first time I faced a roundabout on my bike, however, my brain almost exploded trying to sort it out!)
No rat-infested broken-down trailer like on that other horse farm in Missouri. No narcissists or hoarders or people who talk down to me (at least not yet), like I had encountered a few times last year (the details of which I had mostly spared you in my book but they still weigh heavily on my mind). Not even a transportation snafu, like had all but done me in while stranded in Oklahoma City and Ellis, Kansas. Even the weather is good — no shoe-melting heat wave, tornadoes, or wildfires — although the rain and cold are coming.
Right now, I am sitting in my lovely private carriage house (pictured), the radiator warming the early morning. I will feed the foals and bring in the mare and help move the cows and clean the stalls and prune the garden and weed-whack the apple orchard. I will have tea and lunch with my hosts, and I will ride my bike to a nearby strawberry farm or a castle or the site of a rebellion. And I will not take a moment of feeling safe and sound for granted. No mass can help me count my blessings more right now.
A sign I passed yesterday said Safe Journey in both English and Gaeilge. I didn’t even remember what that felt like before this past week.
Discover more from Traveling at the Speed of Bike
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
