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There is a cave system in New Mexico that contains deep within its heart
the most beautiful limestone formations that have been discovered so far
in the world. There is flowstone and stalactites, cave pearls and columns,
vast chambers and minute grottoes. The system runs for miles and more,
it is thought, has yet to be discovered. The air from the outside world
moves through these caves in mysterious ways so that the stone in some
places has been spun and sculpted and moulded into delicate formations
some as fine almost as hair, others, folded and fluted like the petals
of flowers. And because of the mineral content of the underground water
that has caused all of this, the colours of the formations are so bright
and so varied that they beggar any attempt at description. Imagine if
you can a stone tulip, a pale burgundy colour and so fine that the light
from a torch will shine through it. Imagine curtains of honey coloured
flowstone twelve feet in length hanging from the lip of a pool and straws
of pure white stone hanging from the roof of a chamber so fine that your
breath will move them and clustered so thickly that to walk amongst them
would be to shatter and destroy them. Then imagine that there is a great
iron door at the entry to this system and that it is bolted and locked
and that admission is granted only to a few.
What a wonderful tourist attraction that cave would be. Can't you see
it? Walkways and coach parks and burger stands and toilets and an interpretative
centre. This is a democratic world what right has anybody to stop Wilf
and Daisy from Walsall or Kurt and Anna from Cologne seeing one of the
great wonders of the world? The answer is that if the cave system were
developed it would be destroyed and the very reason for going there would
be lost. The earliest explorers of the system discovered very early on
that their breath and body warmth alone was causing changes to the formations,
that mud brought in on their boots to pure white chambers was fouling
the pristine stone and would not be washed off. Instead the iron oxides
in the mud dyed the stone and the limestone snow field was sullied and
its purity destroyed. The cave is only visited now by speliologists pushing
further into the system and geologists researching and photographing the
caves. I have never been there I have seen the pictures and that's enough
and that's the way it should be.
Of course the local tourist development agencies and private developers
gnashed their teeth and jumped up and down at the thought of all those
millions of lost dollars but there is nothing they can do, the cave is
closed.
Near
the village of Killnaboy, in the Karst Burren region of County Clare in
Ireland, a network of narrow country lanes leads you up into a high land
of shimmering white limestone pavements and stone walls. It is a land
that one of Cromwell's officers described as having 'not enough wood to
hang a man, not enough earth to bury a man nor enough water to drown a
man'. If you stand close to the centre of this area and look around you
it is as though the world has been turned to stone. It flows away in all
directions, a few bushes and thorns somehow clutching to the rock, bright
flowers shining in the clefts and slits. In certain lights, those wet
sunny blustery lights of early Spring and late Autumn in particular, it
can seem as though the stone is moving, a sea flowing around you. In the
heart of this land lies Mullaghmore a limestone mountain, it's bedding
planes jutted up at the angle they were tilted at when this land buckled
and moved millennia ago. Under Mullaghmore plants that are normally only
found in the Arctic grow alongside sub-tropical plants. It is the only
place in the world where this happens. For the Burren is not a barren
place it is truly a rock garden, a garden in the rock. The scars and slashes
in the stone hold rank grass and scrub and cattle can be grazed here all
the year round, for the stone acts like a giant battery soaking up the
warmth of the sun and holding it so that the plants that grow in its folds
and scars can flourish beyond the normal growing season.
But Man has found his place here too. From the first wanderers in this
land who followed the retreating ice as the glaciers melted, to the farmers
who live and work the land today, Man has built and tended and pulled
down and moved on. Burial chambers, ring forts, booleys, slab tombs, early
Celtic churches, shepherds shelters, cottages and farms, all built from
the bones of the land. There are holy wells and churches, burial grounds
and standing stones. This has been a place for hermits, for men and women
who came to seek their gods away from the rush of the world, a place for
contemplation, for the soul to drink in the silence of the stone, a place
of great spirituality.
And now the Irish Office of Public Works wants to build an Interpretative
Centre there with a shop, a car park, a coach park, toilets and audio
visual theatre. They will build it in the style in which they have built
the centre at Dún Chaoin, in the Dingle peninsula. It will be massive,
it will have thick solid wood doors and there will be bright brass and
tiles and lots of glass for the spirit of the place will be nothing if
not monumental. But it will be a monument not to the soul or the spirit
but to the kind of mind that sees a land only as something to be exploited
and developed. The centre will urbanise a whole area, the tiny roads will
be choked with coaches and the peace of this most beautiful and special
place, special not just to Clare or Ireland but to the world, will be
gone. It will provide fewer jobs than a hairdressers shop and will destroy
for ever the soul of that part of Ireland. For, of course, once the centre
has been built there will be clamour for wider and better roads to get
the coach loads of tourists into the place, just as there is in the Dingle
peninsula at the present where they are screaming out for an end to that
' horrid little road from Tralee to Dingle, which impairs access to our
treasures.' (Seosaimh ó Conchuir Letter to the Irish Times 14/09/94).
Millions of punts have already been spent on the development, the builders
have already dumped their cabins and cleared a way in for their machinery
and put up their signs. But the site is quiet just for now because the
Burren Action Group, a handful of local and national voices crying out
at the folly of this development were listened to for a moment. They weren't
asking that the centre not be built, only that it should be built on the
edge of a village, tucked in amongst existing buildings and made relevant
to the community not to the monumental aspirations of the architects and
developers of the OPW. They were ignored of course for the OPW sees itself
answerable to no one, noither in Ireland, nor in the world outside. The
BAG scored a small victory when they forced the OPW to apply for planning
permission for the scheme which would probably have led to a public enquiry.
But recently a high court judge pronounced in favour of the developers
and the scheme is on again, though as of the end of August when I was
there last nothing much had been done. The objectors are almost helpless
now, they mortgaged their homes to fight the OPW won one battle and then
had the decision overturned. It is hard to see what more they can do.
And they are not powerful people, the seven plaintiffs who are fighting
the OPW in the courts are Lelia Doolan head of the Irish Film Board; P.J.Curtis
writer music producer and broadcaster whose family have live in the Burren
for five hundred years; Finola Mc Namara, a teacher; James Howard and
Patrick McCormack two farmers who live beneath Mullaghmore; Dr Emer Colleran
from Galway University and Dr John O'Donaghue a catholic priest and poet
who ministers in Galway. And these people and their allies and supporters
have been ridiculed by some, verbally attacked and threatened by others
and accused at various times of being ‘communists, homosexuals, drop-outs,
blow-ins’ and most heinous of sins ‘intellectuals.’ I have
fought similar battles to theirs here in England and have had punches,
bomb threats and abusive anonymous letters. It hasn’t stopped me
fighting but it has made me very careful about what pubs I drink in and
where I do my shopping. The same thing has happened to some of the BAG.
It’s the price you pay for speaking up and when I hear of things
like this I’m reminded of that lovely line of Seamus Heaney’s
‘whatever you say, say nothing’. But of course we do sayn and
we do speak up, and we take the consequences, though we hardly think them
fair.
Irish politics often operates at the level of horse trading and sifting
through the tons of verbiage and shenanigans that have surrounded the
Mullaghmore project makes the Augean Stables look like a hi tech kitchen.
Local political interests and the OPW’s determination to save face
at whatever cost makes it almost certain that the centre will be built
there under Mullaghmore. Nothing will make them even consider moving the
site to Killnaboy or Corofin or one of the other villages. What is it
that makes them ignore the opinion of botanists and environmentalists,
writers, artists, climbers, walkers and musicians not just from Ireland
but from all over the world who see this development as an ecological
and spiritual disaster? It is hard to see how a country like Ireland which
has produced more than its share of the worlds great art, from the beautiful
work of the goldsmiths of the La Tene period, through the scribes of the
great books to Synge, O Casey, Joyce and Yeats, could not only come up
with such a crass idea but could embrace it as though it were somehow
a symbol of the new Ireland. I don’t believe that we should lock
up the land of the Burren like that cave in New Mexico, only that it be
treated with more love and respect. There has been a great deal of local
support for this project because it is seen as an answer to the unemployment
that has driven millions of the Irish (my own people included) overseas.
It will provide less than half a dozen jobs for only six months of the
year and the spin off into the local economy will be minimal. The coaches
that bring the tourists in will take them out again to the big hotels
and the towns like Limerick and Ennis. Siting it in a local village will
at least give it a local dimension and might generate some income for
the village. Sticking it under Mullaghmore means people will go and look
and leave. The three most often asked questions in interpretative centres
are ‘Where’s the toilets? Where can I get a cup of tea?’
and ‘Where’s the way out?’
I love Ireland. My mother’s family came from Tipperary and Dublin,
I was brought up in a strong Irish Catholic household and was educated
until I was eighteen by Irish men and women. I have travelled, walked,
played music, filmed and written in Ireland for thirty years and it breaks
my heart to see its beauty being destroyed like this.
I was walking in West Kerry earlier this summer and at the end of one
walk I stood looking at the great ugly green OPW concrete blockhouse that
stands on that once soulful shore at Dún Chaoin and a Danish woman
asked me ‘How did they let them build that fish factory on such a
lovely place?’. I have no answer to that question but please God
let's hope Mullaghmore doesn’t get another fish factory.
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