All Blogposts
As a conscious act, we document our inner and outer selves, meticulously curating the facets of our existence, both the painful and the triumphant, that we wish to leave behind in the world.
Holly Marie Armishaw
Blacksod Bay
You couldn’t be looking out into Blacksod Bay and fail to think of Rescue 116. The helicopter went down here last year, 2017, while on a mission in bad weather conditions. All four crew were lost. You can see Blackrock Island where the incident occurred from everywhere along this stretch. I had never […]
The staycation; land, sea and me.
I’ve taken a break from this blog for a staycation; interwoven with salt water, forest bathing and butterfly spotting. It was hot in Ireland. I often sat under an umbrella, unable to put even one toe onto the baking sand. All the windows and doors had to be open wide, day and night. Everything […]
The boar-toothed, blue-faced hag
Post-heroic stories aren’t focused on individual glory; they’re focused on community. On diversity. It’s not about slaying the dragon, but about harnessing his special skills – making him part of the team. It’s about understanding, and valuing, the black, feathery, croaking wisdom of a crow. It’s about living with a half-empty stomach so […]
Getting to know birds better
“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life […]
Rural life; it’s not all birds and bunnies
Living as a rural artist is challenging. Out here in County Waterford, we have to make our own fun as they used to say. We make everything up from scratch. Since leaving Framework the organisation I co-founded in 1994, I have had to review living out here in the middle of nowhere. Of course […]
Still lucky enough to find tiny treasures underfoot
O I could gush! Spring has arrived and underfoot things are hotting up. Although these wild couple of acres give fantastic cover to all sorts of small animals, every field outside of these boundaries is now preserved for a local a gun club. The guns are a worry for a wandering photographer like […]
Here she comes at last.
And everything is slower here. I have to keep reminding myself. This ice will melt. The evenings will lighten. The soil will warm. Spring will come again. And the slower it is, the closer it binds time to me. Binding it tight. Hundreds of seconds and minutes of this time thing. This wiry, […]
The light and the shade
Q. How many Irish Mammies does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Sure don’t mind me I’ll be grand in the dark. Irish joke So the snow eventually thawed, although for days it was banked up on both sides of the escape route. I didn’t venture down to the […]
Winter wasn’t quite finished with us after all
“This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring and how loved I am, how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty and I do not forget; what […]
