The Burren in northwest County Clare, on Ireland’s west coast, is a truly extraterrestrial environment. With its soils long ago eroded away and exposing open limestone ‘pavement,’ this is a terribly beautiful and barren place. Imagine a lush, green rolling landscape; now strip away most of the color and softness, revealing the dead flat and severe underlayment below the surface. It looks like a dystopian and post-apocalyptic vision of a future Ireland. Limestone walls, which show an amazing variety in construction strategies and technique, sit hard on the pavement and partition it into irregular shapes. Huge cracks score the stone surface and dolmens and remnants of ancient structures poke up and add mysterious detail to the emptiness of the area. This kind of desert beauty in stone is like the minimal American deserts to which I am also attracted.
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