Of a River in Ireland, and Why I go to Standing Rock

Ten years ago, I spent most of a summer in Ireland. I had gone to hike the Wicklow Way, from Dublin to southern Ireland, but thanks to a grate on a sidewalk in Dublin, I sprained my ankle the first day there, and my plans had to change. This turned out to be a fortunate accident, as I ended up spending a lot of time with locals. I spent a couple of weeks in Dublin, a few weeks in Glendalough valley, and a few more in a tiny town in southern Ireland where my grandfather was born - Carriag na Suir, or Carrick-on-Suir. The town straddles the Suir River, part of the town in Waterford County, and part in Tipperary County.

In that town I met many lovely people - a printer who introduced me to a local historian who had a THICK file on my family heritage, a lovely woman who worked at the local mill who I almost daily shared a pint with at the local pub, my hosts at the B & B where I stayed, who sent me off each day loaded down with food and plenty of local wisdom. Everyone I met - everyone - kept telling me that I needed to meet Michael Cody - a local teacher, writer, poet who had won many international awards for his poetry, and who could tell me a great deal about the town.

I finally got up the nerve to call him, and he invited me over immediately, and he and his wife were lovely. When a birthday call came from a friend while I was in their home, Michael - exclaiming that it was my birthday and a gift was called for - got down several of his poetry volumes from a shelf, signed them, and presented them to me. As we talked that day about the town, it came out that both his grandfather and my grandfather had worked on the Suir river as boatmen. In the county at that time, the “port” for ships coming in was upriver from Carrick at the town of Clonmel, but the boats couldn’t make it that far upriver without help. The Carrick boatmen would stand on shore and grasp ropes tied to the boats, and haul the boats upstream to Clonmel - seven miles. I walked the seven miles along their “tow-path” while I was there, and, just hauling my back-pack, it was not an easy walk.

We talked about our ancestors, about the town, and, at one point, with a wistful look on his face, Michael said to me, “I can’t imagine life anywhere but on the river - it *is* life.” I think often of that day, of his face, and of how I felt as I later stood on the banks of the Suir, watching the blue water rush by, as I prepare to leave for Standing Rock. My grandfather, though he left Carrick when he was very young, loved that river, just as he later grew to love the Kootenai River in northwest Montana, on which he lived many of his later years. In his notes, I found a quick scrawl about the Kootenai, where he wrote “There is nothing like the exhilaration of life on this river.” Yes. The exhilaration of life. The profoundly true notion that water IS life.

This is why I go to Standing Rock. Not only are the Standing Rock Sioux honoring their ancestors by protecting the water, but they are honoring ALL of our ancestors, and I must honor mine.