my oceans - His oceans

I'm not sure when I first saw the sea, but as long as I can remember I have had an aching longing for the sea when I am not near it.

I have often thought of the ocean while being very far from it in Minnesota. Other water, like the Mississippi River is also impressive, but there is something about the vast, limitlessness of the ocean. 

Galway Bay, Ireland

My desires for anything tend to be solidified in a dreaming of the sea, waves, beaches, and huge unknowable skies. Fears about my future and wonderings about the meaning of life have their potential answers in the sea. The possibilities seem endless when I think about the oceans. 

Cliffs of Moher (I will post more about that later) :) 

If I'm honest, when I get to the sea, while I am fully amazed, in awe and very solemnly joyful to be in the place I have dreamed and written and thought much about, something is missing. Something else that is not there by the sea. My aching longing is not met by the thing I desired so strongly.

I love what CS Lewis says about aching: "If you find in yourself a desire which no earthly thing can satisfy, the logical conclusion must be that you are made for another world. That other world - heaven - echoes in you." 

I am joyfully accepting that my needs and desires cannot be met by the things of this world. Praise God that he has put desires for eternity in my soul! What complex and wonderful things emotions and aching longings are.

Irish Sea

by Hannah Jak

The stirring, solemn march of tides,

beyond horizons ever rides.

The gulls awake me with their cries,

a glimpse of You against the skies.

The tumbled questions like the waves,

for who knows all but God who saves?

The wind is cold and salt, Your roar,

as waves crash ever on the shore.

Explorations of Derry ~ Londonderry

I am being extremely PC by calling Derry ~ Londonderry by both its names. There is still a disagreement after many years about the correct name of the city. The Catholics/Republic of Ireland loyalists call it Derry and the Protestants/British 'Invaders' call it Londonderry. All this we learned in our excellent walking tour of the city. This is going to be a hodgepodge of random slices of our days spent in Derry city, which I'm going to call it just cuz that is easier and gets less irritated corrections from anyone.

 First of all, we were in an excellent hostel, that had 6 luxurious beds. Our previous hostel in Belfast was an 18 bed dorm and was freezing cold at all times. So this was a nice upgrade.

The view from the city walls over the 'Catholic' side of town. Derry is a city with the best example of well preserved city walls. They are a mile all around and 4 beautiful gates that can all be seen clearly from the center of town. 

 We crossed over the Peace Bridge, which was opened in 2011 as a connection point between the Catholics that mainly lived nearer the city and the Protestants who mainly live across the river.

 We also found some Excellent Graffiti underneath a highway crossing tunnel, and so of course I had to have it immortalized in photograph. :P They do have some cool graffiti in Derry.

 This is the really yummy dinner that Ruthiey made us: Spinach Salad with an invented dressing from our random ingredients that we had in the hostel. Also some pasta with ground pork and Edam cheese on top, which was my invention. We were very cheerful to be in Derry, which we both immediately loved. 

 Next morning, we decided to have an 'alone day' to just spend time with God and to reflect on the trip so far. This is the excellent and appropriate quote I found on my morning out and about.

 This is another view of the Peace Bridge and the varied weather, it was sunny but cool and windy.

But the next morning, the fog was as thick as we had ever seen it in our lives! That behind Ruthiey in the sky, is the SUN if you can believe it! 

 This is the Peace Bridge again, and the sun behind it.

 A delicate spiderweb is highlighted by the fog in beads of condensation. That was a magical morning in our very special city of Derry.

The Mourne Kingdom and Newcastle

So we determined to go to the Mourne Mountains where CS Lewis got some inspiration for Narnia. Also it is suppose to be simply beautiful views of the ocean and the little seaside village of Newcastle. 

 This is our early morning Belfast city as we walked to catch the bus to Newcastle. It was like 6am something! super early! :P

 Ruthiey's early morning face, not as scary as mine! which is why mine isn't here at all. You will never know what you are missing. :)

It is the Ulsterbus company, in case anyone was wanting to do the same route, pretty decent prices, about 13 pounds to get there and back in about an hour.

 We walked through Newcastle village to get to the park at the foot of the Mourne Mountains.

 Of course any glimpse of the sea must be photographed extensively. I have to save up all these beautiful sights and sounds for when I am landlocked again.

 We took an illegal logging road to get up past the tree line quicker. That is one thing I hate about hikes, is the walking in the trees and not being able to see anything cool or even sometimes where you are headed! Of course logging roads tend to be muddy and rooty..

 I decided there is a color that should be called Irish green, it is all around you and saturates your eyes so that you can hardly see it anymore but it is extremely distinctive and beautiful.

 I was so excited to get past the trees and see the ocean again from up above.

 Then we saw the snow away in the distance, we kinda laughed about it and thought it was odd to have snow when it didn't seem that much higher up and away... more to be discovered about this later...

 This igloo-looking stone house is actually an ice house from way back when they didn't have fridges or freezers, the very rich people could store their meat and alcohol in these ice houses and have nice cold everything when they wanted it.

 it felt nice and warm in the sunshine, so I was down to only 2 layers, down from 5 layers when we started.

 The snow is still so far away, right?

 Then all the sudden we were in the snow and it got extremely cold before I even noticed it. The trail became a frozen waterfall, literally, we couldn't walk on the trail we had to trudge in the deep snow beside the trail.

 Finally we reached one of the summits, a lower one, but it was super windy and the clouds were hanging around on top. It had gotten so cold so quick that I hadn't even had a chance to put on my other layers. I wished for gloves too late. :P Instead of attempting to go higher, we decided to head down, and so reached the bottom in half the time it took to get up. It was about a 2 hour climb up.

 After warming our frozen selves in a small cafe, we went down to the beach and walked along it for quite a while.

 This picture is of my feet in the water while I was predicting to Ruthiey that she was going to get wet up to the knees before the end of our ocean trip, sure enough less than 5 minutes later, she was wet to the knee of one leg! Haha... she told me to stop predicting things after than.

 A beautiful lonely coast.

 Heading away from the Mourne Mountains.

 This is heading back towards the Mountains.

As an added bonus, I have included this photo of a VERY old crow, who was not getting around so well and had plenty of grey feathers, to prove his age.

Also, Stephen, I wanted to tell you that I got a bunch of 'found' objects on this beach that are unique and for you to make jewelry out of. :)

We went on a tour - Giants Causeway

So starting on this trip we had this insane desire to do things all our own way and not be 'traditional' tourists. But, the Giants Causeway is way out of the way of any regular buses or major towns and we figured for 15 pounds we could afford to be traditional tourists for the day. This is the tour - 

 We started out by going to a castle, which is very old and we weren't allowed inside, but we did get kicked out of the bus to do a 'photo shoot' with the castle. I was significantly more interested in my first decent view of the open sea since arriving in Ireland, which is below.

Next we went to a remote location that has a rope bridge that use to be used by fishermen to throw their lines off of into the sea, we had quite a nice walk along the seaside to get to the bridge. 

 It was VERY windy and quite cold up there, but the sun was mainly shining, with some clouds, a perfect day really.

 This is the bridge, you can see it spans over a small section of ocean. Because of the wind, it actually sways and twists quite a bit.

 I was sitting by this Kiwi woman (New Zealander) on the bus, and I took her picture after she successfully braved her fear of heights and swaying things over large bodies of water. Perfect work Jeannie! But then of course she had to cross back over still!

 The coastline on the walk back to the bus. Serious there is something to be said negatively about being on a schedule to see beautiful things and then get back in the bus in X amount of time!

Then we drove on, had a traditional Irish lunch. The sun was still out, but it was much colder, at least I felt much colder by the time we got to the Giants Causeway. 

 We took a different turn then everyone else and ended up on a trail high above the Causeway and every one else. If you look carefully at this photo below, you can make out small black specks on the roadway that are actually people. :P

 But because we are awesome, we got to take pictures with the WHOLE Causeway, not just a section. :) We were a little proud of ourselves for still being non-traditional even though we were on a tour.

 Random coast shots, a little further down from the Causeway, we hiked up along the ridge of the cliff for quite a ways...

 It was COLD, see the ice? No joke. Then the sun disappeared and it felt even colder.

 We finally made our way down the cliff to the Causeway, it is very strange. A formation of hexagonal rocks all the way out into the ocean. They told us stories of the two giants from Ireland and Scotland who had it out about who was the biggest and through the fights the Causeway apparently got smashed up and so that is why it doesn't reach to Scotland anymore. :P

 Ruthiey walking down to see the sea.

 It was a stunning and wonderful place, and the ocean is always incredible. We sat for a while and just listened to the waves. Then, completely chilled to the bone, we headed back to Belfast in the bus. :D But it was worth it. We'd had a great day out on the coast.