As creative as an Old Irish Goat

The post I wrote a few days ago about my recent trip to the West of Ireland was my most popular—it was read in far more countries than is typical for my blog posts, nearly 20 and counting.

I found that the story I included about the discovery of the Old Irish Goat is fascinating everyone, so I thought I would tell you a bit more about them, then show you how my goats, two female Nubians, taught me a valuable lesson we can apply to creative work.

The interest in the Old Irish Goat is nicely summarized in a recent article in The Mayo News. “The Old Irish Goats have a long lineage, stretching back beyond the Neolithic Age to the Ice Age, two eras that have left an indelible mark on the Co Mayo landscape, from the Céide Fields to Clew Bay itself. They are literally as old as the hills. The presence of these goats in reasonable numbers in Mayo is another chapter in the county’s long history as a refuge for declining species.”

The Old Irish Goat Society was established in 2006 to preserve the breed in the wild and to achieve official rare breed status. With traveling companions Mark Bowles and Eamon Howley, I visited their breeding operation at Westport House. We were hosted by Sean Carolan, one of the lead volunteers.

A doe had given birth to two kids that morning, and Sean was smiling.

Sean told us about the work being done and when he finished Mark wondered “Gee, how did they survive the Famine?” and I thought, wow, yes, somehow these goats were clever enough, hardy enough, adaptive enough, to have survived all those years on an island of people starving to death, may they rest in peace, amen.

My two Nubians were named Athena and Persephone by my daughters—they were reading a lot of Greek mythology when we got them—and almost every day for a whole lot of years these two goats would accompany me and my dogs for long walks in the woods behind our little six acre farm. After I would hike in for a while I would settle under an old oak or by the side of a creek to write or work on one thing or another; the dogs would range and the goats would graze and as I came to fully understand how they did that, their strategy for grazing, I saw it as the perfect analogy for how to begin important creative work.

When they saw I was settled they would feast on the foliage furiously, frantically, ripping leaf and stem, chewing just enough to swallow, and they would move quickly from spot to spot, first one shrub then another bush, then the tall grasses, then the young leaves on a low hanging branch, never overly much of any one thing but rather a good sampling of all they could reach, biting, ripping, chewing quickly, and rapidly ingesting and collecting it all in the front compartments of their four-chambered stomach system.

Then, if I sat there long enough, and depending on the lushness—or scarcity—of the season, they ingested enough, and now it was time to digest. They ‘d find a covered spot close to me—I was their comfort in the wild—lie down with their legs folded under them and they began the process of slowly, deliberately, digesting their intake.

In the two front stomach chambers the plant material is separated into solids and liquids and microbes begin to break down the plant fibers that form into clumps to be regurgitated as cud. The goats chew their cud deliberately now, carefully and completely—they can enter into a trance like state if they are left alone long enough—and when the plant fiber is when swallowed again it is easily digested and they have captured every bit of the nutritional goodness locked in the plant.

They are extraordinarily efficient—goats in the wild are most often found where foliage is scarce.

And so we have a picture of how to attack a new creative challenge. Behave like an Old Irish Goat. With all your energetic enthusiasms you attack the challenge by first aggressively collecting inputs and ideas and stories from as many different sources as you can, organizing them to retain them, and then when your collection capacity is filled, sit back and carefully consider what you have discovered, chewing carefully, looking for patterns and mashing them up with each other.

The 53rd Parallel in Ireland

Ireland, oh Ireland, how I love you so. A lovely land creates a loving people, and it was grand visiting you all again, and making so many new friends.

I just returned from a wonderful trip to the West of Ireland, 53 degrees North. My wife and I and our three daughters lived in Galway for a year in the late ’90’s. We became close friends with Eamon Howley and his family, and I reached out to Eamon when I realized a new character was emerging in the trilogy I’m working, and she was leading me to one of the few corners of the West that was unfamiliar to me. I needed to come for a visit.

Eamon runs BEM Ireland, one of the leading event and tour services in the West. One of his talents is to take a good idea and make it better and soon the trip was something more and soon the party was larger as another good friend and my brother-in-law, Mark Bowles, joined us.

We began in Galway. Eamon introduced Mark and I to the right folks and I was invited to speak with National University of Ireland students about being more creative and Mark was celebrated by the local start-up community as he shared his knowledge and wisdom–Mark’s a very talented and successful entrepreneur.

After a couple of days (thanks for dinner, Trish) we left Galway heading north into County Mayo. Much of the action in the River of Lakes trilogy that occurs in Ireland takes place in County Mayo. In the second novel, ‘Worlds Between’–recently sent to my publisher in anticipation of a Fall ’15 release–Brian Burke and Maureen O’Toole have married and we meet their baby daughter, Grace O’Malley Burke. She has been named after the true pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, who lived in the 1500’s and was a last chieftan fighting against the Brits taking over their country.

Grace O’Malley is her English name, Gráinne Ní Mháille her Gaelic name, and Granuaile was her common name.

One of her favorite homes was Carrigahowley Castle, called Rockfleet Castle by the Brits. It sits at the end of Clew Bay, just north of Newport. In the third novel–working title ‘Grassy Narrows’–Grace O’Malley Burke is 14 and traveling to Ireland for the first time since she was 4. She feels compelled to visit the castle and standing alone at the parapets, she comes to understand the importance of her name and she makes a new claim as she leaves something important behind.

Eamon continued to work his magic so that when we arrived at the castle we were met by two new friends, the local historians Sean Carolan and Paul Harmon.

A perfect picture of our time with Paul and Sean: the castle has recently been padlocked, closed to the public, but Sean had the key to let us in.

Paul and I shared a fascination with Grace O’Malley and as we worked our way to the top of the four story castle–it’s a stone tower house, about 20 meters high, three big beds would nearly fill each floor–we swapped our favorite stories about her and Paul told me secrets about the castle I didn’t know. Paul’s company, Electric Escape, conducts ebike tours of the area and his story telling makes history come alive.

And Sean’s new interests come from a recent discovery that the small herds of ancient looking wilds goats found locally aren’t feral domesticate goats as had long been assumed, but are in fact ancient, a remnant population of prehistoric creatures. When I asked if I might have seen them one day when my family and I were hiking a low hill above Killary Harbor I learned that in fact that is where the other small herd lives–I too had assumed these were once domesticated goats reverting to older characteristics, something hogs are quick to do in the American South. Sean is volunteering his time to help care for the breeding population that has been captured and cared for that purpose, and invited us to join him the next day.

But first we dashed back south to Cong. Eamon had previously introduced ‘The 53rd Parallel’ to Gerry Collins, the owner of The Quiet Man Museum. Those of you who have read my first novel know that many key scenes occur in Cong during the filming of that movie–a key character is John Wayne’s body double, for instance. Gerry invited me to do a reading in front of the Museum, and the honor was mine. And he insisted that I coach his tour guides about the book, so they could reference as they might during their tours of movie locations.

We stayed at Michaeleen’s, the B&B Gerry runs with his wife, and the next morning another new friend came to meet us, Lisa Collins, Gerry’s daughter. She’s written a musical based on The Quiet Man and is hoping to see a first staging of it this summer. She sent me the script and I can’t wait to read it.

As we left for Westport House, to see the Old Irish Goat breeding operation, Gerry took me by the arm and said “I like the way you talk about us. Thank you.”

And then, this:

I can’t wait to find out where Grace O’Malley Burke leads me next.