Lá Bealtaine Shona Daoibh Go Leir!

"Happy May Day To You All!”

I’m wrote this from Ireland in a small wooden shack overlooking the harbor of Kinsale Harbour, a tidal estuary that opens into the Celtic Sea, on the cusp of Beltane—or May Day. This is the season when special bonfires were once kindled across the Irish landscape, their flames, smoke, and ashes believed to offer protection. People and cattle would circle the fires, pass between twin flames, even leap over embers, participating in a ritual that marked both transition and renewal.

From these communal fires, household hearths were extinguished and then relit from the Beltane flame, carrying its blessing into daily life. These gatherings were not only about fire, but also about feasting—and about honoring the unseen. Offerings of food and drink were left for the aos sí, the fair folk said to dwell in an otherworld reached through “thin places,” where the veil between worlds softens. Fire, in this sense, becomes an offering too: a gesture toward harmony with what we cannot see.

It is fire as blessing. Fire as breath from the earth to us.

And it arrives just as the land itself moves into abundance. This is the season of flowering, of cattle returning to the fields, of life pushing decisively past winter’s edge. That ancient rhythm—death into rebirth—still hums beneath even our most modern systems of belief. And here, it’s visible everywhere. Heather and rhododendron are just beginning to bloom. Green fields stretch outward, broken by hedgerows of golden Scotch broom—native and at home here. There are traces of hardship too, faint scars in the hills where potatoes once grew before the famine. But overall, life feels full again.

Kinsale itself carries its own layered stories. It claims ties to figures like the Irish American pirate Anne Bonny, and today it’s known as a center of Ireland’s locavore food movement. With its bright bays rich in fish, bivalves, and seaweed, and its impossibly green pastures dotted with grazing cattle, County Cork is a place where food begins vividly in the landscape.

That’s part of why I’m here: exploring the possibility of a Wild Food Camp in Cork for Flora & Fungi Adventures in 2027.

What’s striking, though, is how familiar so much of it feels. The pathways are thick with stinging nettle and wild garlic—what we also call three-sided leeks back in California. The coastline offers over a hundred species of seaweed, nearly all edible. Much of it I recognize, though dulse and carrageen are newer companions. Mussels cling to rocks just as they do at home. Oyster farms dot the water. Herons and cormorants fish the tides while boats pass through the harbor. Even the light—sunny, more often than expected—feels like a quiet surprise.

And yet, there’s another layer here that changes everything.

The pubs hum with live Irish music. The cheeses and butter carry a richness I keep being told comes from the grass, fed by all that rain. But more than anything, it’s the people—the warmth, the wit, the easy conversation with whoever happens to be nearby. It’s a culture where sociability feels like a shared language.

So if a Wild Food Camp were to take root here, it couldn’

t be just about the landscape. It would need to hold both worlds. Time in nature and time among people. Seaweed foraging by kayak alongside tasting cheeses at the English Market. Seaweed baths and sauna, followed by a cold Atlantic plunge led by Irish storytellers. Hands-on cooking, then evenings gathered in a pub with local musicians.

A weaving of elements—wild and human, ancient and alive. It’s all here. Now the logistics. 

We’re working on it. Stay tuned.