There is an unsurpassable feeling as I sit or stand around a campfire – a feeling as though I have always been there. Though I may be meeting people I have never seen before, of races and beliefs I have never known, there is rarely a feeling that I am unwelcome, amidst certain people. An indigenous quality of welcome is present for the benefit of a stranger, to be incorporated wholly into a community to the level of their choice. If I want to be alone, I will be so, and if I want company, they will give it to me. Who are the people of the vigil camp of Tara, who remind me of the inhabitants of the various kinds of living quarters I have loved in West Cork – people who do not judge, but ask important questions. And who am I to be here?
I watch the group of young (16 – 18) girls who seem to run the eatery at Tara, where I eat a drastically overpriced bagel for breakfast. They discuss make-up, tight jeans, sequined belts, and show their affection to one another in giggles and pinches. A culture shock is in the world of difference between the lifestyle apparent here, where I take my breakfast because I can afford it, and that of two fields away where I spent last night, in a tepee with a fellow who has lived and maintained a fire for over nine months, and his companions who have been there about as long, camping outside through the 2006 summer and winter. They maintain a 24/7 Solidarity Vigil, protesting all day each Friday and participating in and organising certain branches of the Tara protests. I drink coffee from a cafetiere and they drink tea that they boil in the pot on the fire. These soldiers’ communal point, a large tepee, has been improved upon even since my last visit to Tara two weeks ago. A local friend and participant in the campaign has helped put together people’ ideas to form a stove from two half barrels and an aluminium pipe, which helps the smoke lift through the smoke hole on top of the wigwam and reduce the amount of rain that can extinguish the fire. Allow me to reiterate that this fire was lit on the Summer Solstice of 2006 and has not gone out, despite several different base locations.
The café is far too warm after last night’s freezing endeavours. The central heating, exploited, overwhelms this spoiled writer, not as used to the cold as those in the camp, but not wanting this strange wasteful heat either. My life, O Reader, was not an uncomfortable one thus far. I have always maintained, or have had maintained for me, the pleasures and comforts necessary to stay healthy, and happy. I have always been warmed by the help of my family, and sometimes my friends. But I now feel cold. I feel rigid and hurt. I wonder if the power of an idol god in the shape of the Euro, has finally sunk its teeth into a formerly generous and moralistic nation. Are we so rich, that not only can we refuse the menial petrol-station-toilet-cleaning jobs in the knowledge of those willing to be paid less, but perhaps we leave it to the foreigners, too, to fight our battles for basic heritage protection?
I feel sick from finally clicking in to the ignorance in which our country is kept, pawning a unique folk land to the dirty whores that run the Ultimate of our society. We all know the evil controlling hands that touch our everyday lives, molesting us through our recreational pleasures, and we are all aware of the extent to which the U.S.A is brutally wiping out anyone who, like the Irish once did, stand against their marauding invaders. To some degree, we all know that it’s not just the puppet-masters of our baby Bush, and that our own evil of greed and petty, shoddy, lazy selfishness is shit-bombing our doorsteps. Authoritarian forces continue to rape our children. We are all aware, and yet we continue to sit around claiming we’re not to blame. Where are all you nationalists now, who so love to quote your fathers’ passions about the so-many-years of oppression, and the War of Independence? Where are you, as our Heart-Land is being destroyed? What does your media report of the full-bodied skeletons of the Fianna being bagged, broken, removed, most being prepared to be ploughed and covered by an unnecessary 10-lane motorway with a 52-acre interchange? Why, in the name of Ireland, is no one being informed about what’s going on in Tara? And why are our prejudices continuing to block us from even looking!
This is not the first time I have wanted to shout at the world. Nearly every day that passes, I am not entirely able to keep peace with myself for not doing more, and I develop world-weariness. But saving the planet is not all about intention, though that is the first need. It was synchronistic to choose the weekend to go to Tara in which I could experience all aspects of what’s going on there. One of the main reasons for my journey recently was to witness the lunar eclipse and to partake in a general ceremony of appreciation of the Life we hold, for which the hill is famous. I was not prepared for the onslaught of information that was borne down on me for the duration of my stay, nor for the emotional depression that I held as I traversed through three of the thirty-eight Skryne-valley archaeological excavation sites (Baronstown, Collierstown and Soldier’s Hill) to see what was being done. I and a number of new friends, including an Irish archaeologist, examined trenches and items that were being dug up – some things bagged and removed, most would be disregarded. What the media called “charred remains” was in fact a sacred cemetery, in which over 30 graves were all pointing towards the King’s Hill, Tara. According to the archaeologist with us, these would likely have been important people – Fianna warriors, leaders, or kings. The land cried to me, and I cried for the land. And I cannot tell you what these moments are like – when the spirits of the environment surround you and screams to you in pain. There is wrong being done! Grave-stones are being used to hold down plastic sheeting, tombs are left exposed to the elements and are disintegrating, purely because of “bad workmanship,” as my archaeologist friend politely called it, and a very evident contemptuous uncaring for anything found, because they do not want to find anything. They do not want people to know that anything is there. They do not want us to know, because we would stop this atrocity if we knew.
“They” are the National Road Authority, who employ large numbers of archaeologists to partake in a mediocre level of excavation – but nothing that stretches beyond the perimeters of the proposed motorway (even though some of the thirty-eight sites spread over larger areas). It is clear that they have a preconception that they will be building this road no matter what they find (anyone remember the Nice Treaty?) Pat Wallace, the Director of the National Museum of Ireland, has written to the Minister for Environment against it, and has been ignored. Where does this leave us?
Along with staying in the camp and seeing several excavation sites, I was also present at one five-hour meeting of the Campaign to Save Tara, effectively the foremost and last group to be working against this. Any questions and confusions about what is being done were quenched. But even this official organisation, made up of members of branch campaigns such as Save Tara, Tara S.O.S. and Tara Watch, can only do so much. Their message is clear: Stop the road going through the Skryne-Tara valley and put into action one of the several alternative routes or methods available to achieve the same goal. They will be having an official campaign launch in the first week of April. Please listen, brothers and sisters: This is the time to act.
http://www.savetara.com
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