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Red Mountains I thought, closing my eyes, I would see the mythic boar rise from the peat, its tufts of willow and hazel scrub, drumlins jutting from jowls, and Saint Columba dipping wine from the tenebrous lough below, his Psalter unbolting the doors to crannogs. But none of these visions was given to me. Atop Benbulben that December, I saw only the dying of another year. Sheep plodded down a switchback, rumps red, yellow, and blue, and as the wind picked up, everything slipped away except the red ewes hunkered in crannies. The mountain face turned to clay. From the ridge, loblolly roots dangled, the longest one stripped to sweet wood, and my hands, shoes, the knees of my pants ran red. For a moment, I was suspended above it all. Then it all returned to peat and sheep, the shadow myth of ruins. Just today, I recalled the clay bank behind my granddad’s shed, the taproot I used as a rope, and my father’s shoulders as he held me and ran along the ridge after I’d finally climbed the steepest red mountain in the country, hell, in the world! 4 ...

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