Why Ireland?

This question has been asked of me by many folks recently, most emphatically by two of my uncles at a family gathering a few weeks ago.

I suppose it's confession time, for those that don't already know: As far I know, I have not a drop of Irish blood in me. My family tree is rooted largely in Poland (~50%) and Germany (~25%), with the other 25% being somewhat of a mysterious mix, largely believed to be primarily English and/or Welsh.

So why the fascination with Ireland and Irish culture?

It may as simple as how you never get over your first love. Aside from Canada--which hardly counts when you grow up a mere 20 minutes from the border--Ireland was the first place I'd ever been to outside the US. It was also the first time I'd ever flown commercially. In fact, I had never even seen an ocean before we took off across the Atlantic that night. The trip was a very big and memorable event, so it's not really a surprise that anything that conjures up memories of that time would strike a chord with me.

But there were seeds planted long before that trip.

As anyone who knows me or has read this has figured out by now, my love for Ireland is inseparable from a love for its music. While much of the deepening of that passion has been building over the course of my adulthood, it started much earlier. Some of my earliest musical memories--if not earliest memories of any sort--were of listening to old records of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, who in the 1960's brought an Irish sound to the mainstream American folk music scene. Exactly how my parents got turned onto them, you'd have to ask them, but as they were hippies of a sort at the time, I just always figured that was the sort of off the wall things hippies got into.

But there is more to it than just the music. There is a certain feel and atmosphere in Ireland. It is a place that can still be timeless and ancient if you want it, and yet if you dare to peek beneath tourist board-approved the surface, you'll see a country as modern and advanced as any. Cozy, quaint and relaxed pubs still cover the countryside, but one will have no problems finding a more modern and hip nightlife in Dublin and other larger cities.

And speaking of that countryside, Ireland's rolling hills and rugged coastlines are known the world over. From the green, mystic peaks of the Wicklow Mountains and rolling green fields of the midlands, to stunning coastal views along the coast of Kerry and the mountains and bogs of Connemara, Ireland offers physical beauty that few places in the world can match.

But take the music, the atmosphere and the scenery, and you still have a place that would be lacking if not for one final ingredient: the people themselves. The particularly well-travelled parents of a friend of mine once claimed, when describing one of the dozens of countries that they'd been, that this particular country had "the second friendliest people in the world". When asked who were the first, they stated without hesitation, "the Irish." While my list of places I've been may be considerably smaller, I will say my own experiences firmly support their sentiment. While no sweeping generalizations can hold true for 100% of any population, the hospitality of the Irish is typically overwhelming.

It will be interesting to see how my thoughts and perceptions on the place change over the course of a longer period of time, when I'm experiencing it from a role somewhat different than "tourist". I'm sure there are many glossy ideas in my mind that will be smudged, erased, or rebuilt altogether. But I suspect that any voids in my perceived utopic view of Ireland will be filled ten-fold, by newer and richer ideas and experiences which will not even be conceivable to me until I begin to live them.