There’s a couple living in a cottage on a little beach called Inchydoney which is on the south coast of Ireland. Their names are Justin and Allison and they are many things; musician, chocolate maker, stained glass artist, writer. They are amazing cooks, home nettle beer brewers, warm fire starters, charity shop volunteers, thinkers, dreamers, doers…

I arrived at their doorstep a couple days before New Years 2009 with a group of their close friends. I had heard about them; how amazing they are, some camping trips they’d had, their mustard-yellow VW bug they’d drug around the world with them, their tattooed wedding bands and about Allison’s dreadlocks, but that trip was the first time I’d met them. They welcomed me with a glass of sloe gin. They had picked the berries and made it themselves and it became my new favorite drink.

Justin and Allison stay in a cottage that is owned by a family friend. It’s a summerhouse and not exactly equipped for southern Ireland winters unless, of course, you’re resourceful, organic, and hard-working as, of course, Justin and Allison are. They installed a wood-burning stove as their source of heat and for cooking. My thin skin and flip-of-a-switch lifestyle had some shifts to make. In my world if you’re cold you push a button and the air around you gets warmer. I have no connection to the heating system of my house, for all I know it’s magic and definitely taken for granted. When Justin and Allison are cold, they fetch some wood from the road ditches and drag it back to the house where Justin chops it up then Allison uses it to make a fire. It’s cause and effect. Work equals warmth equals life.

Throughout the week I watched them and I listened to them. There’s depth to Justin and Allison and in that depth they keep their strength. In my world we don’t have time to find and explore those deep places. Maybe I’m scared. Maybe the clock on the wall ticks so loudly that I can’t focus on anything but the passing of time. Justin and Allison are different. They stop and notice things. They hear the ocean even when the doors and windows are closed up. They know the source of the warmth in their home. They know the source of their food and most likely they picked the vegetables and bartered for the meat from the very farmer who raised it. They know where their next breath will come from and they know there’s something bigger than them out there somewhere that brought them together and placed them exactly where they are.

Justin and Allison could go anywhere. They could get anything they want given their talent, intelligence, and warmth. But they choose to stay where they are – connected to the ground they live off of, feeding from the rhythm of the rising and setting sun and letting that daily cycle determine their next move. As Justin said: “There is a rhythm which permeates all of life, and when you ignore the rhythm, you lose the dance. And the dance is the thing. There is a slow underlying pulse, which comes from the tides and the sun’s rising and setting. Then there are the beats, which fill in the bars, the cutting of wood each morning, the heating of water for coffee, the cooking of the meat for dinner. This dance is the lifeblood of our joy. It is the breathing and the warming and the beating.”

Today – March 15th, 2009 – is their first wedding anniversary.

Justin’s Freehand says, “Spread your wings and fly.”
Allison’s Freehand says, “Spend your life.”