Campervan Therapy

Himself groans as I shout ‘Follow that brown sign.’ But he slings the van up the winding military road, over the purple heather-clad mountain, from Laragh to Glenmalure as if he’s in a Hollywood car chase.  

Shekina Sculpture Garden

The only sign that we may be at the Shekina Sculpture Garden is a granite ball with a bite out of it, its mica twinkling in the sun, in Kirikee’s fern filled country lane. The entrance to Glenmalure, Ireland’s longest glacial valley, much loved by these two hapless wanderers. The garden itself lies behind a modest green, country cottage.

Catherine McCann

A diminutive, silver haired woman comes out to meet us, flames in enamel, Shekina’s symbol, glows amber by the front door. Catherine sits us on the patio, the small, one acre site below us. A curious peace descends as she tells us that she started ‘sculpting’ this garden in 1979 and feels it is now complete. She invites us to use the senses of sight, touch and hearing as we explore, telling us to take our shoes off if we wish and insists we’re to touch the sculptures, to pick leaves, to listen to the brook burbling.

Let the Sculptures talk

She asks us to let the sculptures speak to us through our senses, to let those senses lead us to an appreciation of beauty and to an ‘inner seeing’. Seán, forever the champion of the rational,  looks suitably terrified, especially when Catherine insists that  we explore the garden separately to connect with art and nature before we meet again to discuss it.  

The Brook

Catherine sends me to a bench behind a hedge, by the brook that runs clear over shale and schist down the birch edged slope.

The sun dapples the birch leaves and the white trunks shine, the water gurgles and peace descends, time doesn’t just slow, it becomes irrelevant.

Hidden Bowers

Hidden bowers offer up surprises at every turn. Each one offering a different vista so that this one acre garden expands infinitely. The curved shapes of the shrubs, in various shades of green and purple, blend in with Fananieran Mountain behind. Blue hydrangeas seen through a porthole in a granite sculpture make the flowers more blue, more lacy, more intricate.

Catherine insisted that we can even sit in the sculptures so pretty soon I wedge my posterior into Fred Conlon’s granite spiral. I wouldn’t be allowed this freedom in any grand historic house or art gallery.

The stainless steel globe shines in the sun, the black wrought iron screens remind me of my father, who trained as a wrought iron worker in Ireland in the late 1930s.

Catherine is right, this garden’s peace brings you to ‘inner seeing’ through the senses and, more than that, gives you the chance to step out of life, to think and see and feel and hear every detail of every moment. And best of all? My ever-rational-one even admits that sometimes you have to park the logic and just feel the world that’s before you.