Walking the Old Path ; Journey of a 21st century storyteller
As the sun set on the first day, my heart was full to bursting. The swifts and swallows ducked and dived their way through the air, calling in the coming night. The fire crackled and flickered beside me. It was day one of my story walk, and I honestly didn’t know if I could keep going. In a single day I had witnessed so much beauty and sadness. Could I sustain this for a month?
On that first day I had already sat around two fires; one in a forest, and the other in my host’s garden; as we broke bread with her friends. Over the course of 24 hours I had heard so many stories of people’s lives. I had heard new myths, old folktales, songs and personal journeys. I heard a woman forgive the nuns, I heard one doctor confess to wanting to be an artist, another tell of her IVF journey. It was a feast of all human experiences. I had set myself the task of traveling Ireland for a month to hear stories and share stories, but I wondered if my heart could take that much humanity?
I woke the next day and repacked my little backpack. I sat with my heart thudding in my chest. Already, I thought, I am overwhelmed by my task. So, I sat still and thought about what I could do to keep going. A phrase appeared in my mind; “Empty the Cup”. If my heart was full, could it be thought of as a cup that could fill to the brim? Could this cup also be emptied? I took a deep breath and I imagined emptying the cup of all the sorrows and joys of the day before. The disappeared fathers, the struggle of freelance parenting, the 4 year old’s story of a bear. I poured them all out and felt my heart grow steady. I was ready for day two.
18 years earlier, in 2005, when I was thinking about becoming a storyteller, I read Frank Delaney’s novel Ireland. Set in the 1950s it follows an itinerant storyteller as he moved from place to place, on a lifelong story walk. I was taken by its’ romanticism. I loved how the protagonist storyteller carried the news and observed life in all its terrible beauty everywhere he went. When I became a fully-fledged storyteller a year later, somewhere deep in my mind was the thought that to truly be a storyteller I would have to walk the walk.
So, in 2023, I reached out to 40 friends and acquaintances, and asked who would like to be a host on my walk. I was stunned to find that I had 18 offers within 12 hours. “We need this”, they said, “this is the right thing for now”, “this is bonkers, I love it”. Now my idea had taken root in the imagination of others. I was not alone. The work of making the story walk actually happen began in earnest.
After hearing the idea, my dear friend Ciara Hinksman gave me the word Immram. She is one of the founders of Forest School Ireland Association and said it was a word they often used in forest school to describe a deep journey. Immram, she said, is a wonder voyage, and you are certainly headed off on a voyage of wonder. The word became my talisman. The wonder I was seeking was not that of another world, or a foreign land, as is often told in the medieval Immram tales. Rather I sought the wonder that was lost during the pandemic; the wonder that exists in the space between us humans. This is a place where connection, creativity and kindness happen. The place where I remember myself as ‘myself’ in the relationship to ‘ourselves’.
Day two of the Immram I walked the Mamturk mountains with a poet friend. May is a glorious month in Ireland. Everywhere was thriving with life. Above us sang the lark, a bird with two throats who only sings while flying. She danced in the air above us, filling the world with her song. The land and mountains rolled out beneath our feet, singing themselves in their own way; the low slow sonorous mountain song of being. The poet friend talked of all the people she had lost in the last four years. We shouted friends names onto the wind who were gone too soon. We sat at the edge of an outdoor altar, the sacredness of the place resonated off the slate tiles.
The next morning, after I packed my bag and ‘emptied my cup’, I sat and listened to stories of Belfast. Bike shops and bombings, curfews and careful citizens. I heard a story of a rare meeting with a wild hare. The man described the incredibleness of being seen by a wild animal. As I sat, tea in hand, croissant nearby, I was struck by the sheer amount of untold stories inside people. My role it seemed, was not really to tell, but to listen. Each story was a rich and colourful thread. If we think of human culture as a fabric, the role I had stepped into was to tend to the threads given to me. By doing so, I can then restitch some of them back into the social fabric.
There is something incredibly beautiful that happens when someone tells a story and shows one of these threads. A look comes over their face that is rare and wonderful. They stand inside their memories or the world of the story; from there they speak of their joys or their sadness. This is transmitted directly through their body and into the heart of the listener. When they finish, they emerge as if from a dream, and they are suddenly vulnerable and childlike, wondering if what they said made sense. They are entirely unaware of how beautiful they were. Unaware of the gift they just gave.
Over the next few days I moved from farms to pubs to schools to fields. In each place I was made welcome, in most places a fire was lit. I heard such stories…the rogue behaviour of Irish banking, the housing shortage, the 100,000 Russians fleeing to Kazakhstan to avoid the war, the rarely discussed suicide rates of menopausal women. I heard about parents inventing new folktales to teach courage to their children, and people’s encounters with the unexplainable (ghosts, presences, sounds, ancestors). I heard a man weep for a mythical goddess, and an English woman dismantle the royalty with a well told joke. I heard many tales of hospitals and griefs. I heard of a mother and daughter being “between homes”. The richness of what I witnessed is hard to capture.
One evening in a field in Mayo, I stood talking with an 82 year old man. He was a neighbour to the woman who was hosting me. She was trying to convince him to come to the fire that night. He was determined he could not, as he would miss Emmerdale and Coronation Street. “Paddy, I won’t pass this way again” I said. “It’s a one-time chance to hear some stories”. Paddy mumbled something about maybe, and he’d see but he hated to miss his programmes.
At 7:30 who shuffled down the path but Paddy himself. The host was overjoyed. I didn’t realise why until later. The night was one of those perfect nights in Ireland. A gentle heat, a few clouds, warmth coming from the earth. The flies caught the light of the setting sun on their tiny translucent wings. The fire flickered and the air was rich with the scent of growing things. A dandelion had discharged her little feathery wishes and they had all fallen into my lap. A good metaphor for how I was feeling. I shared a few tales but focused mostly on listening to others.
That night we heard everything from jokes to poems to personal stories. The hospitals were mentioned more than once. When Paddy, the elder neighbour got up to go back to his tv shows, the host said “one moment please”. She took out a piece of paper.
She explained that during the pandemic she had taken a song writing class online with John Spillane. The song she had composed was for her neighbour Paddy. She had watched him walk the road outside her house four times a day during the pandemic, and there were many days when he was her only contact with the outside world. His presence had meant so much to her that she had written a song.
As she sang this gentle homage the whole gathering sighed. We settled into the kind soft gratitude of it. All of us had been alone, all of us had sought to find anything to keep us going. Here was Paddy, receiving a song in honour of his efforts. A thread of the fabric was restitched in that moment. Paddy hung his head as he listened. Blushing, he rose and thanked her and shuffled home to catch the next episode of Emmerdale. This was one of many many gorgeous moments that happened.
Sadly, on day 7, I caught Covid. I remained Covid positive for two weeks and remained symptomatic for two months. I was unable to complete the Story Walk. To my delight some of the hosts went ahead with their gatherings anyway. More stories were told and fires were lit. The fabric was tended to. I was so happy that the idea had clearly taken hold.
As I emerge from Covid, I share this tale here with you. We have some work ahead of us to heal from these strange years. Stories and gatherings ( I would recommend that these be safely held outdoors / in very well ventilated spaces to minimise transmission risks) can go a long way to helping us remember the space between us. This space is what humanises us. This kind of work can help us restitch ourselves back to each other and back into our cultural fabric. I will Immram again, possibly once a year. I plan to do this in other countries as and when it is needed or asked for.
Look after yourselves and each other out there. Light the fire my friends. And keep her lit.
