In the mountain hollow

Originally published 22 August 2004

My newest book, Climb­ing Bran­don: Sci­ence and Faith on Ire­land’s Holy Moun­tain, was launched here in Ire­land the oth­er evening, by (appro­pri­ate­ly) Bran­don Books, which — like me — makes its home near the base of the mountain.

An Irish book launch is a fes­tive affair, this one held in O’Fla­her­ty’s Bar in Din­gle town. Pints were quaffed. A bit of nosh devoured. A few short speech­es and a quick read by the author. I was rather expect­ing a bot­tle of cham­pagne to be bust­ed over my head like they do when they launch a boat down at Din­gle pier, but I was spared that indignity.

Any­way, a hand­some Ireland/UK edi­tion of the book is now adrift on the iffy seas of the pub­lic’s affec­tion. We await the reviews.

Bran­don is Ire­land’s sec­ond high­est peak, after Car­ran­tuo­hill across Din­gle Bay. It takes its name (accord­ing to local tra­di­tion) from Saint Bren­dan, who set sail from a cove near the moun­tain’s base on his leg­endary voy­age to America.

The most pop­u­lar route to the sum­mit is by the old pil­grim path from the shrine at Faha shared by the Vir­gin and the Saint, at the east­ern foot of the moun­tain. The ascent takes the climber through a steep-sided val­ley called Couma­knock (“moun­tain hollow”).

In the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, John Ball, an Alpine moun­taineer, vis­it­ed this and oth­er near­by bowl-shaped val­leys (called cor­ries or cirques by geol­o­gists) and noticed sim­i­lar­i­ties to val­leys in Switzer­land where liv­ing glac­i­ers reside today. Where you see the same effect, assume the same cause, said Ball, and so the real­i­ty of the Ice Ages in Europe was recognized.

Nowhere on Bran­don is the skele­tal struc­ture of the moun­tain so vivid­ly dis­played as in these bare, damp cor­rie rocks. The ice-carved gash of Couma­knock is like a sur­geon’s inci­sion that lays bare the moun­tain’s sed­i­men­ta­ry stra­ta. Loop­ing, twist­ed lay­ers of rock con­firm dra­mat­i­cal­ly, if con­fir­ma­tion were need­ed, the sto­ries told by geol­o­gists of ancient seas and shift­ing continents.

Most of the rocks date from the Upper Pale­o­zoic Era of Earth his­to­ry, between 300 and 400 mil­lion years ago, the era of “ear­ly life,” when the first amphibi­ous crea­tures were mov­ing out of the seas onto the land, insects took wing, and parts of the con­ti­nents were cov­ered with vast swampy forests.

Con­ti­nents were adrift then as always, rid­ing the mov­ing sheets of Earth­’s crust called plates. An ocean called Iape­tus was squeezed out of exis­tence as old­er, less famil­iar con­ti­nents col­lid­ed to form a new land­mass called the Old Red Sand­stone con­ti­nent. The ori­gin of the name is clear; the rocks under our feet are red, rose, pink, salmon, maroon.

The Din­gle Penin­su­la was then a low­land basin in the inte­ri­or of the Old Red Sand­stone con­ti­nent. There are no marine fos­sils in the rocks, only fos­silized bur­rows of ter­res­tri­al worms, so we know the basin in which these sand­stones were deposit­ed was dry. Cross­bed­ding sug­gests wind­blown sedimentation.

Towards the end of the Pale­o­zoic, about 250 mil­lion years ago, a sec­ond moun­tain build­ing thrust, asso­ci­at­ed with the approach­ing col­li­sion of Africa and Europe in the south, crum­pled the sand­stone lay­ers and forced them skyward.

I trace on my geo­log­ic map the track of our ascent, from Faha to the sum­mit. The map shows one col­or for the length of the path, which the accom­pa­ny­ing book­let iden­ti­fies as Bal­ly­more Sand­stone For­ma­tion, “rhyth­mi­cal­ly bed­ded and firm­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed sed­i­ments,” lay­er after lay­er of red rock, alto­geth­er about a kilo­me­ter thick.

In the ice-carved head­wall of Couma­knock the folds of these stra­ta are beau­ti­ful­ly revealed. As we make the steep ascent up through the stra­ta, we are mak­ing a jour­ney through mil­lions of years of time, an epoch hun­dreds of mil­lions of years ago when these rocks were deposit­ed lay­er by lay­er, grain by grain.

The 1500 years that sep­a­rate us from Saint Bren­dan are as noth­ing com­pared to the abyss of time by which we are dis­tant from the bur­row­ing worms of the Old Red Sand­stone Con­ti­nent, and the real­i­ty of those eons is man­i­fest­ly clear to any­one who makes the ascent of Bran­don along the pil­grim path from Faha.

John Carey, a schol­ar of ear­ly Irish Chris­tian­i­ty, tells us that the Irish of Bren­dan’s era ground­ed their faith firm­ly in the nat­ur­al world. “In find­ing a road to God in their expe­ri­ence of nature, the Irish cel­e­brat­ed a uni­verse which is not sun­dered from its Mak­er,” writes Carey.

“If you wish to know the Cre­ator, first study the nat­ur­al world” said Bren­dan’s con­tem­po­rary Saint Colum­banus, and noth­ing speaks quite so elo­quent­ly of the cre­ative pow­er of the Mys­tery of Mys­ter­ies as the ice scoured rock walls of Coumaknock.