Reality in Fairy Tales..

This is the post I had intended to write for Saint Paddy's day last month, but I got sidetracked by the election of a new pope. However, April sadly finds Chicago drenched in a weeklong chilly, grey drizzle which happens to be the perfect segue to Ireland and fairy tales...  

In Ireland, magical things can happen. Generally though, magical things didn't happen in flat cornfield towns outside of Chicago. Nor were magical things known to happen to slightly rebellious average young girls from  dysfunctional poor families. But in Ireland, magic was in everything and around every bend. I grew up fascinated by Irish lore and music, I devoured folk tales and dreamed of fairies and changelings. And I waited.. 

A few years out of college, I realized that I was still waiting, waiting to be swept off my feet and carried off to faraway lands. Quite frankly though, I had had enough of waiting, and so I booked my ticket, packed my bag and headed off on the first of many treasured solo adventures. 

 After a few days of peat fires, hot tea and a bad case of the flu, I left my little cottage for a drive along the coast between Donegal and Sligo, passing beautiful little villages, freakishly lush green rolling hills, and kind Irish souls frantically waving me back to driving on the proper side of the road.  Byways zig zagged off of the main highway and blind curiosity had me turning onto a particularly tiny winding road leading towards the sea.  

Following a couple miles of steep drops, white knuckles and sharp bends, I slowed to a stop, set the parking brake, got out and simply stared. While the wind whipped and dampened my hair, the drizzle from the grey clouds above mingled with the mist from the white capped waves on the rocks below. At my back, the startlingly green fields dropped sharply into a lively churning Atlantic, while the smells of grass and dirt merged with fish and salt.  My eyes fixed ahead as clouds shifted and parted over the spires of a distant castle, boldly perched to challenge the sea while offering sanctuary to the mythical Fianna warriors . My romantic heart sighed and in those awed moments I fell in love, weaved stories, composed songs, wrote poems, ached for a paint brush and talent, and crafted dreams of chivalrous lords and beautiful ladies. 

Great-grandson of Queen Victoria and great-uncle to Prince Charles, Louis "Dickie" Mountbatten had a young love for his first cousin Maria, daughter of the last tsar of Russia and sister to the much rumored surviving Anastasia. From the time of the imprisonment and brutal assassination of 19 year old Maria and her entire family to the time of Mountbatten's own death, he kept her picture near.  At the naive age of 23, Mountbatten married the beautiful young heiress Edwina Ashley who then promptly, publicly and frequently made a cuckold of him. 

World War II found Mountbatten fatally orchestrating the failed Dieppe Raid in which thousands of Canadian soldiers were senselessly lost and the Allied forces learned everything not to do when storming the beaches of Normandy two years later. after WW II, Mountbatten was sent to India to act as the final viceroy in the handoff of British power to a newly independent India. Despite agreeing with Gandhi that a united India was the best path forward, Mountbatten's attempts to convince the powerful leader, Jinnah, were met with failure. Lines for a separate Pakistan were hastily drawn, eventually causing the loss of up to a million lives to murder and ethnic cleansing. And through it all, Mountbatten turned a blind eye to the long standing love affair between his wife, Edwina, and India's first prime minister, Nehru. Even so, when Edwina died at age 58, her body was buried at sea, mourned by Mountbatten and accompanied by two indian destroyers sent by Nehru. 

I stared at the beautiful Classiebawn Castle, knowing nothing of her owners, Lord Mountbatten and his wife, Lady Edwina.  I had no idea that on one rare sunny day, an elderly Mountbatten took his wooden fishing boat, clandestinely strapped with a fifty pound bomb courtesy of the IRA, out on the Atlantic. As the explosion rocked the quiet coast near the feet of legendary Benbulbin and Classiebawn Castle, the lives of Mountbatten, his 14 year old grandson, a 15 year old local boy an 83 year old dowager and a family dog dramatically ended.  Mountbatten said goodbye to this world just a few weeks after I had been born and some 20 odd years before I would travel around the world to stumble upon his lovely home, seeing only romance while forgetting the simple fallible humanity.

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/1000milesorbust/hiketosaintpeter1000milesorbust

Chocolate Caca

Oloron-Sainte-Marie is a little town of approximately 11,000 inhabitants tucked up against the Pyrenees of southwestern France. Situated on one of the timeless routes of the Camino de Santiago, Oloron-Sainte-Marie’s 10th century cathedral has achieved World Heritage status and a pilgrim’s evening summer stroll through the city, along the river would be accompanied by the heavenly scent of warm chocolate mixing with the humid night air. 

After a day of meandering through the busy streets of Lourdes and stumbling over an abundance of sellers peddling miracle working wares such as Mary shaped holy water bottles and glow in the dark rosaries, Ola, her mom and I happily found ourselves in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, sniffing our way to the Lindt chocolate factory. Ola, a tall, pretty Polish girl with an unshakably sunny disposition and her smiling mother filled a small shopping cart with truffles and bars boasting 90% coco while I became enthralled by a pile of plain sealed boxes, each titled “Kilo Surprise.”  

A half hour later, our little car bounced along the quiet french country roads and while Ola and her mom chattered away in the front seats, I sat quietly in the back, mentally wishing goodbye to a childhood of Nestle and Hershey as I reverently opened my first bar of Lindt double milk chocolate.  I placed one tiny square of smooth chocolate on my tongue and closed my eyes in pure bliss. 

After that day and due to the obscene quantities of chocolate that I had bought, Lindt became a treasured part of my daily routine and a reward for tasks accomplished.  Surely clean dishes were worth at least one square of decadence!

A few summers later, I followed Saint James across the Spanish countryside with three beautiful frenchwomen, hoarding chocolate, wine, cheese and fresh baked bread along the way. Upon discovering a particularly messy melted bar of chocolate in the bottom of one of our bags, lovely Isabelle would simply rip off a bit of bread, greedily wiping the chocolate wrapper clean.  One clear hot day, after walking on tired legs past a golden field of contentedly grazing cows, I sniffed the air in confusion. “I swear, the cow poop here smells like chocolate!? I must be overtired and hallucinating..." My walking companions laughed at my suspicions, attributing my quirks to my simply being american. Poop does NOT smell like chocolate!

Weeks later, after completing my pilgrimage to Saint James and saying goodbye to the new dear friends I had discovered, I made my way to a small town outside of Valencia to visit family friends before heading back to the states. Two days before I was to fly home, I found myself walking rows in a thirsty olive grove owned by my host Paco, a middle aged friendly man who I strongly suspect could rule the world with absent minded perfection if he so chose. Covered in dust crusted sweat, armed with my tiny tank of a camera, and sporting a new gash in my leg where I had lost a battle with a thistle plant, I stumbled back to where Paco stood under a large shady tree. I watched curiously as he pulled a dark brown pod off a low branch and began to chew his way through. Seeing my interested look, he explained that the Carob tree that he was standing under grows throughout Spain, southern Europe and parts of the middle east and Africa. He chatted on about how in better times, Spaniards harvested the pods of the Carob to be used in making syrups and sugar free chocolate, but due to a lack of financial returns, the carob pods were now mostly used region wide as animal feed. As Paco launched into an in depth  explanation of the many merits of carob and how the seeds of the pod were actually the weight measurement behind the ‘carat,’ my mind focused in on one tiny detail...   So, poop actually DOES smell like chocolate!!

Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for this pic..
Courtesy of Lindt ;)

And now.. Walking Details!!  Despite the chill of January, I managed to walk 45 miles which is about 4% of my 1000 mile goal for 2013. Together, we have raised $420, about 8% of our 2013 goal of $5000 for Almost Home Kids.  

For more info on this amazing and loving charity visit http://almosthomekids.org 

and to donate, visit
http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser
/1000milesorbust/hiketosaintpeter
1000milesorbust

I hope you all have a wonderful Saint Valentine’s Day. And as for gift recommendations ... Lindt!  Large quantities of Lindt.. Perhaps even a ‘Kilo Surprise!’  

My lovely host holding an olive branch

Under the Carob Tree..

Soneja Siesta!

How many soccer balls did it take to bend that sign :)

Soneja.. Fun with camera settings..