Giant's Causeway July 16, 2016

[Martin Hash]

Life is a meandering path of lucky events, as manifested by the improbable number of coincidences that occur. For example, every morning my Windows 10 laptop greets me with a different inspiring photograph of some natural wonder; sometimes I recognize places I've actually been, like the Moreno Glacier in Chile, but mostly I don't know what I'm looking at, and all the images create a longing to actually be in that place. While traveling in Ireland, one morning my computer showed an especially peculiar image that was natural but looked to be man-made, a quiltwork of footpad-sized polygonal rock formation. I definitely felt the vague allure of visiting such a fantasy-like place. Little did I know that my future was being foretold...

Giants Causeway from Screen.jpg

We were on a tour of Northern Ireland, specifically to see the hedgerow from Game of Thrones, but also to visit something called “The Giant's Causeway.” It was a couple hours drive from Dublin, where we were staying, but the bus was comfortable. Unfortunately, the GOT visits were unimpressive, and the lunch was awful, we were hoping at least to get a chance to hike at the next stop, which was the Causeway, and hike we did, the shoreline was 500 feet below the clifftop, and the stairs down were steep, then there was a half-mile walk along the beach where lots of weird volcanic formations sprayed foam from crashing surf.

I could see our goal ahead: thin fingers of rock grouped tightly together, rising into the sky. There were several groupings, a couple of which you could walk over, the “causeway” part I suppose, so we did. It was then, while stepping carefully from one footpad-like rock to the next, that I recognized this was the picture I had seen on my laptop in the morning! An actual pretelling, indeed, walking in the future which was now the present was eerie in the extreme, even with the swarm of tourists sharing the experience. The coincidence was so overwhelming that it challenged my disbelief in mysticism.

Giants Causeway.JPG

p.s. While waiting for our flight to England, I started watching new Netflix series called “Spotless” set in Hammersmith, London, and when we arrived, previously unknown to us, we met our traveling companions in, you guessed it, Hammersmith.