Tra-Na Rossen, Donegal

“There it is,” Pat, the area bus driver said, pointing toward the hostel in the distance, a big gray building with two gables and a loggia with natural stone facing and gray slate roofs blending into a rocky hill below Crocknasleigh Mountain standing 544 feet.

Tra-Na-Rossan was the northern most hostel in the Irish Republic, and donated to An Oige in 1936 by Mrs. Phillimore, a respected and well liked lady in the community. She had a Catholic cross constructed on a green sward so villagers wouldn’t have to walk the two miles to church.

It was a large, comfortable, cozy isolated place with miles of beautiful countryside, beaches and mountains for exploring with views east over large grassy fields full of grazing sheep and west to the Atlantic coast.

The lower area below the hostel was all bays, wide green pastures, low rolling hills, inlets, patchwork designs of land leading to distant beaches and beyond to Horn Head, a massive projection of rock miles away and only accessible by leaving the peninsula. A single road past the hostel led toward Melmore Head.

He opened up, moved into the warden’s separate living area, read the previous warden’s notes regarding emergency numbers, checked supplies and rang up Dublin on the hand crank phone verifying old accounting ledgers and filing his report with the home office. They mentioned “the problems” to be sorted out.

Flagstone floors. The spacious common room had a fireplace, couches, chairs, tables, book shelves with games and reading material. A small pantry stocked basic canned goods. There were drying closets, bathrooms, hallways with many small windows, lots of plants, a miniature greenhouse, notice board and dining area. Exterior buildings held turf and coal supplies, a general storage area, a pump house next to a burn trash heap and piles of rusting cans.

The hostel accommodated 36 travelers in a warm, comfortable place along their journey. The warden area contained a bedroom, kitchen and small sitting room. The Smith Corona had a new table and a lamp to illuminate his work.

Sitting in his Donegal kitchen with life’s operating manual on the table he heard wind blowing banshees as a peat fire roared.

One morning his Aussie lover headed south and home where she worked as a nurse in the outback. Their wild intense affair satisfied their primal natures. Helen stopped along her way and they moved through collective consciousness sharing quick painless conversation, laughter, tales and uninhibited passionate animal behavior. Her long red hair was on fire. They expanded and regaled collective energies through lust, attraction and attachment phases with a strong gravitational energy.

The hostel was deserted in the dead of winter.