I was over 30 years old when I spent my first night under my father’s roof. My wife and I had traveled to Ireland to visit him there, and tour around the country the way my mother did with me when I was a child. I’ve already told that story — what preceded it, and followed on. But, in the middle of that trip, my wife and I took a break away from the business of my epic father-son reconciliation, to pursue something else. Namely a few pictures of ourselves in the places where the The Quiet Man was filmed by John Ford 60 years earlier. We wanted to send those home to my wife’s father, who loves every line of it.
She and I went driving in a rented car north of Galway, around Lough Corrib. I remember the moment we turned a corner, and the hills rolled down underneath us, toward this body of water, revealing a panorama of Irish scenery beyond it that would make John Ford scream for a working film camera. Giant expanses of sun-dabbled sky and those hilly rural landscapes of Ireland showed themselves to us. I realized why they were so transporting. It was the combination of natural beauty and human ordering. Ireland’s patchwork quilt of green was made by human effort pushing against an uncooperative nature. Those dry-stone walls were made from what was dug up there originally. Nature’s bounty, yes — but a homey human settlement as well, not the wilds of a forest. But this does not, by itself, account for my peculiar attachment to these sights.
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