SNIPPET: Michael HARDING, living on the Co. Leitrim/Roscommon border (1990s), a writer and contributor to the yearly "Leitrim Guardian" magazine, lived in Glangevlin, Co. Cavan for only three years back in the 1970s, but it made a profound impression on him. He recalls driving his Austin A40 through the Glan Gap in 1974, and was deeply absorbed by the grace and beauty of the those mountains that skirt the counties of Fermanagh, Cavan and Leitrim, including Sliabh Russell, Cuilce and Sliabh an Iarann. Coming from a middle class town where the community was already in disarray in the 1960s-70s, Glan was something of a shock to him, as Michael found the fabric of community was intact and people welcomed him into their homes. He found himself having friendships with girls in their teens and old women in their seventies. He found himself with friends of all ages. He was teaching in Loughlin House at the time, spending time drinking bottles of stout, gallivanting with the girls and annoying the unfortunate curate. As the years went by, he often found himself in far off places but wishing he was in Glan. Not born there, yet he had a sense of being absorbed by it, it had seemed like "leaving home." As the years moved on, he realized that the feeling was not sentimental but was deep-rooted. Some awakening of the spirit occurred in him during those years, some opening of the heart. Michael had sometimes kick the rocks on the hills of Glan and said to himself, "Athniom thu" - I know you. The shapes of the mountains and the curves and creases of the roads went into his heart deeper than human feeling, burned into his consciousness in a way that made him feel completely serene. He writes that the names of families he knew and Cavan's townlands have become litanies, mantras to him; the very recitation of them is holy. Michael wrote that one winter's night in Glan he was lying in a damp bed in a house by himself, very ill, when he got into his car and drove to the Parochial house, confident that the gracious curate that was incumbent there would welcome him with an open door and an open heart. He remembers the old man who would play his fiddle outside the houses in the village, an old "angel woman" who would sit by her fire clutching her tin box containing some apple tarts for her favorite cow, "Rabbit." He remembers arguing with old men about the Vietnam war, discussing theology with sheep farmers and listening to Michael Dominic tell wonderful stories about Glan in the years gone by. He saw tears in the eyes of children when a lamb died, tears in the eyes of women when driving their sons and daughters to the airport for their plane rides back to New York, tears in the eyes of the kindly priest, who was known to lavish much attention on the elderly he knew, when he stood over the graves of the dead. Finally, Michael Harding writes with sadness that the old ones are all dead and gone, and as the song says, "the young ones turning grey," but the three years in Glan gave him many precious memories and enough stories to "keep Shakespeare going."