Some places remain in your head all your life. Not intact, but fragments that still convey (broadly) the appearance of the place. So you return, and your geography is completely off but the essence is right.
As a student of Geology, I spent a week mapping in Finney near Lough Nafooey in Co. Mayo. A wonderful time and a wonderful place. The fragments have stayed with me ever since. When I wrote a poem “In Mayo” sometime around 1990, it was Finney I was thinking of.
See http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthann/sets/72157600099944683/ for a range of photos from this beautiful area. From “Sunfire”:
In Mayo
The sky:
rags on bushes
in a wintry gale.
The barbed-wire fence:
a lunatic's music
sprinting down the valley.
The mountains:
tossed heads
with their silvery sheen.
Telephone wire:
daisy-chained voices
humming out of tune.
The lake:
a shirt that blew
off a line.
Rowan tree:
tongue on the mountain
shaping high C.
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