2007. Galway, Ireland.
The beginning of the journey.
Where to begin !
In the summer of 1954, just after my tenth birthday, I was serving as navigator in my father's bittersweet orange and white automobile , a sparkling and obvious attention-getting chromed delight - as big as hearse - a fit simile given that a year later he would nearly die in it when a drunken coal miner drove into him on the Lansford-Coaldale highway.
In July before the crash, we were passing through the eastern edge of the woods of Hauto.
The cabin on the lake was his "look at me-Ive made it in life" summer home only ten miles from our family home on Ruddle Street, Coaldale.
The road seemed to fall away as it rolled through the mountains, ahead was a distant horizon, not only of dark trees, but of a thin pencil -line linking two radiant shades of blue. It was impossible to discern which reflected the other. There I had my first glimpse ever of the beauty of water and sky. I was a Pisces after all, and the water beckoned me. I dreamed of far away waters and skies.
Of the highest order among travelers are those moments when a place, and an indelible link to write themselves into one's memory, occurs. By the end of that summer I was standing on the New Jersey shore. Staring at the distance and imagining another country, somewhere, across the oceaned sky. I day-dreamed of Ireland.
That day, Lake Hauto, Pa. and Galway, Ireland met in my mind.
I would have to wait for my Kate to bring me here.
It is 53 years later.
The beginning of the journey.
Where to begin !
In the summer of 1954, just after my tenth birthday, I was serving as navigator in my father's bittersweet orange and white automobile , a sparkling and obvious attention-getting chromed delight - as big as hearse - a fit simile given that a year later he would nearly die in it when a drunken coal miner drove into him on the Lansford-Coaldale highway.
In July before the crash, we were passing through the eastern edge of the woods of Hauto.
The cabin on the lake was his "look at me-Ive made it in life" summer home only ten miles from our family home on Ruddle Street, Coaldale.
The road seemed to fall away as it rolled through the mountains, ahead was a distant horizon, not only of dark trees, but of a thin pencil -line linking two radiant shades of blue. It was impossible to discern which reflected the other. There I had my first glimpse ever of the beauty of water and sky. I was a Pisces after all, and the water beckoned me. I dreamed of far away waters and skies.
Of the highest order among travelers are those moments when a place, and an indelible link to write themselves into one's memory, occurs. By the end of that summer I was standing on the New Jersey shore. Staring at the distance and imagining another country, somewhere, across the oceaned sky. I day-dreamed of Ireland.
That day, Lake Hauto, Pa. and Galway, Ireland met in my mind.
I would have to wait for my Kate to bring me here.
It is 53 years later.
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