We were in Ireland, my husband
and I, and I saw this stretch of empty road ahead of us, so I pounded on his
shoulder and said, “Do take a picture here, please!” And because he is a most
obliging man he didn’t even sigh. He pulled over to the side of the road and
took this picture.
I was working then on a book
about an Irish rebel named Diarmaid MacGuinness. He and a young Donegal girl
he’d taken along with him (mostly because he didn’t like leaving her in danger
at the hands of her drunken father) had to get from the Inishowen peninsula in
Donegal—which is as far north and west as you can get in Ireland—to Galway,
where the rebel group he was planning conspiracies with were centered. It was a
long distance, close to 300 miles, and this was 200 years ago, at the beginning
of the 19th century.
