My first writing trip to Ireland was to stay at Anam Cara Retreat on the Beara Peninsula near the village of Eyeries. The name Anam Cara means “soul friend” in Irish; it was chosen, in part, to pay tribute to the work and writing of John O’Donohue. The hostess, Sue Booth-Forbes is an experienced writer and editor having started her career at Cambridge University Press. I had never stayed at a writer’s retreat and had the mistaken idea that people would be stuffy and in their own heads with no time for conversation with others. That notion was totally disputed when I arrived in a drizzling rain at ten in the night and was greeted by four women standing in the hallway with their purses over their arm waiting for me. We left immediately for the local pub where I learned to dance the military two-step.
The two weeks I spent at Anam Cara editing my second academic book, made me fall in love with small village Ireland and the cultural influences that saturated every day. I walked among house-high blue hydrangeas and down rural roads where the cows greeted me at the fence. The bay is just down the road full of rocky shores and rolling waves. The stories I heard during meals and in the long light evenings made me want more. I visited a farmhouse cheese production just down the road. I walked down to the farm and the family gracefully explained and demonstrated the process of making the cheese as the cows congregated at the fence to see what was happening. An example of farmhouse cheese is described by Genevieve McCarthy in an article in Cellar Tours. “Burren Gold is a cheese made in the Burren region in County Clare. Friesian cows graze on wild grass and herbs in the fertile valleys between the rugged limestone hills, producing milk that comprises this Gouda-style cheese. The cow’s milk is unpasteurized and a farmhouse cheese as such. The cheeses are also flavored with Nettles and garlic, Fenugreek seed, Black pepper, Cumin, and oak smoked.”
One morning, Sue drove me into Castletown when she went for groceries and I bought Irish lace at a local fabric store. When I returned home, I sewed the lace into curtains that hang in my “wreck” room. The windows face the driveway, so I see the Irish lace every time I come home. I have sought other writing retreats but none have the ambience, experience, or cultural impact that Sue brings to Anam Cara.
Eyeries, Ireland
Centered around a quaint village at the foot of the Slieve Miskish mountains, rural Eyeries is a tranquil area overlooking Coulagh Bay.
John O’Donohue
John O’Donohue’s first published work of prose, Anam cara (1997), catapulted him into a more public life as an author, speaker and teacher, particularly in the United States.
“When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.”
– Anam Cara, p. 17
Leara Rhodes 