As a person completely fascinated with history, Ireland is a treasure chest waiting to be opened. Every town and field has a story to tell. People care about their past and work to preserve the historical record. Nowhere is this more evident than in the town of Ballina, where we experienced the Jackie Clarke collection.

Jackie Clarke, at the age of 11, started a scrapbook of articles about the Irish independence movement. Over the years he collected thousands of papers, articles, posters, and books. Today this vast collection is curated and displayed free of charge to the public. Because people should know their history.

A wee bit further down the road is the Ceide fields visitor center. Under these wind swept bogs, 5,000 year old farms were discovered. Stone walls, standing for millennia, are being mapped by scientists and local volunteers. This is the largest known Neolithic farm site in the world.

My brain can’t process time so distant. After reading the interpretative panels , I walk the bog. Raised platforms keep me high above the water and grasses. Every now and then, I see the stone walls peek out of the ground. Climate change and time buried the dwellings and erased the people who once lived here.

Only the stones remain. I look out from the field to the sea over a flimsy barbed wire fence. What will be left of us? What will bear witness that we were here?

Leaving the fields, we head to Belleek Woods. As we walk along the water and through the trees, we pass an abandoned mill. Its ruins are pretty against the green of the forest. Obsolete yet ornamental. We no longer build with a craftsmanship to withstand time.

Through the woods, school children have painted fairy houses and placed them among the trees. The legends live on. I think about Irish tradition and folklore as I walk. Until I am confronted with a fantastic circular pagoda like structure along the path.

Pre-internet/cellular data, I would have spent a lot of time trying to determine what it could be. Today I just whip out my phone and with a few keystrokes determine it is the final resting place of Sir Francis Knox Gore. He created a mausoleum that demands to be remembered.

Humans are so fragile. We live and sacrifice. Our life’s work is often left to scraps of paper and mentions in media. Our toil whispers in ancient walls and derelict buildings. Graves memorialize who we aspired to be. The past is accessible, if we care to stop and notice….. the traces …..the messages….. the echoes….