I have come to Ireland unwillingly. When my manager, Pauline, asked me eight months ago if I could go, I said “Yes, I can go.” And I could, so there was no other answer to give. I’ll go, I told myself. To support the team, to see another part of Ireland I’ve not been to before. I will go. Because who would say no to a free trip to Ireland? Still, I was reluctant and not looking forward to it. Ten days away from an old dog with a tumor is a long time to be gone. I would surely miss home, and a solid chunk of September light in the Pacific Northwest. There was a very real risk I could lose my all-time Wordle winning streak while skipping half a day on the way to Europe. But I was able to go, so I said yes.
I have come to Ireland without wanting anything from Ireland. Except that is not entirely true. If you fancy yourself a writer, even a mediocre one, you come to Ireland expecting to magically absorb the outrageous talent of Irish writers, just by stepping on Irish soil. You imagine that the lushness of those green hills and the resolve of the marbled rocks will rainbow their way into your body through your teary eyeballs, and settle somewhere inside your brain and take over your pale wrist so that you can never write a bad poem again.
I have come to Ireland forgetting my dreams. Usually my dreams are cinematic dramas I can replay the moment I wake up. These last three days I only remember the presence of a person nearby. Sometimes it’s my mother or my father—never together. I wish they would speak to me but they don’t. They are simply present, lips sealed. They aren’t angry. Or sad. Thank God. Finally, now, neither one of them are sad.
I have come to Connemara to go on a walk. A walk with a well-known poet, leading 97 people down a path set down in a valley. Pilgrims, all. Seeking. The poet leads the walk, his distinctive gait setting a quick pace. I could keep up but I fall back to the rear to make sure all the pilgrims are ok. I fall back an hour into the walk after Pauline had to take four people back to the car due to exhaustion. “I literally found them laying down on the ground.” She texts me, with a picture. She wasn’t exaggerating. “I’ll stay back and make sure we don’t lose anyone else,” I text her back.
To stay back I have to walk slower than my natural pace. At times I pick up speed, pass a handful of pilgrims walking in line, and make conversation with someone. I try to get a glimpse of where we’re headed but I have no idea where this walk is leading to. I’m thinking there must be a ridge we go to and then a view of the ocean, but there’s no way to know. After some small talk, and admitting to whoever asks that I don’t know where we’re going, I slow down and go back to the rear. This reminds me of hiking with my previous dog, George, the way he would go ahead on the trail in front of us, then trot back and to make sure we were still walking. If we walked five miles, George walked at least eight with the extra distance required to lead and fall back, over and over.
Out here, the sheep look just as they do in all the photographs you’ve seen of Ireland. The hills too, and the rivers and the stone walls. But the light is spectacular — it can’t be photographed. It moves too fast to sit for a portrait. Still, I take phone photos, just to try and explain it to someone.
Every once in a while, when I’m clearly the last one I stop and let the wind howl around my ears. I’m old enough now to realize that I might never get here again. So I stand and look in every direction, make an effort to memorize the stanzas of the landscape. Years ago, there were business trips to foreign cities when I spent too much time in my hotel room. All those cities where the bulk of my memories of them is reduced to stiff bed sheets and terrible in-room coffee.
Standing still, here in Connemara, is a privilege. One of many given to me. As a teenager, I worried about my good fortune, which even then I understood was better than most. I confessed this to my father, and told him that it didn’t seem fair that my life was so easy, that I had so much. How does it happen that I was given abilities and opportunities, when other people had so little? How was this possible? How was it fair? My father looked at me and said, “It isn’t fair, which is why you have a responsibility to be generous and compassionate.”
I’ve fallen far enough behind now that I need to walk at my usual pace to catch up with the last person, a young, very tall and thin woman walking while reading a poem from one of the poet’s own books. She’s walking very slowly. I recognize the book but I don’t know which poem she’s reading, and I don’t ask her. She looks entirely captivated by the words she’s reading. I watch her carefully. The ground is uneven and soggy in patches. I would hate to see her tripped up by poetry. But then again, maybe that’s why we’re all here.
I pass her and two other people, counting in my head (three behind me) and then a few more (five behind me) until I set my pace to walk with a woman and her daughter. They ask me how long the walk is, but I have no idea. No one who knows anything about this walk is anywhere near us. They’re all up ahead.
I fall back again, letting the five people once behind me go ahead of me. I text Pauline to say we’re two hours in to this walk and I don’t know when we’re turning around. At this rate, we won’t be back in time for dinner. I type: “You might want to make a contingency plan so these walkers can eat.” She curses in acronym. To make a contingency plan, Pauline will have to work with Anne-Marie, the No Bullshit Irish woman running the show at the hotel. Anne-Marie is a force of nature. Everyone should work for someone like Anne-Marie at least once in their lives so they can learn first-hand what raw competency looks like in action. Anne-Marie will not like that the poet has gone off-script, and Pauline knows it.
The wind is making me tired and thirsty. Speaking out loud, I make a crude joke about sheep and what I would do for a beer right now. I laugh. It’s important to laugh at your own jokes so that other people will know the jokes are funny. But no one can hear my laugh or my off-color sheep jokes. The wind is covering my tracks.
In Connemara I am following the pilgrims who are following the poet. Because who would not be willing to follow him? Who would not make an attempt to know the unknowable? Then again, I acknowledge there are many uncurious people, at home, drinking terrible coffee. I have been one of those people on occasion.
Three hours in. No one is turning around, and I have to hope the pilgrims in front of me have been following someone who was following someone who was following the poet. The road never forked, and we crossed the river a while back so we must be on the right path. Steak. Risotto. A martini. Honeycrisp apples. Don’t think about food. Just keep walking.
I dread the return as we’ll be walking into the wind, which is not insignificant. There’s an older couple who are now last in the group. The woman is starting to walk very slowly. She isn’t complaining but I can sense how tired she is, and her husband will not leave her side.
My phone dings and vibrates in my back pocket. I think that’s What’s App — I never use it. Someone added me to group chat against my wishes. Another colleague, recovering from a recent cold back at the hotel is writing to relay how he has worked out how to get a headcount of vegetarians for the packed lunches we’ll need tomorrow. “Sounds good. We are still walking. We’re not going to make it back for dinner,” I reply.
He’s still fairly sick so is maybe not picking up on my aggressive text-tone. He asks how many people are on the walk. I write there are 92 left because Pauline had to take four people back who couldn’t go on. I continue, write that I’m staying in the back to make sure everyone else is ok. “I don’t know how long this walk is.” I write, hoping this will prompt an answer from the four people in this What’s App group that do know how long this walk is.
Finally, I ask: “Are the buses picking us up somewhere other than where they dropped us off?”
“Ah, yes. It’s a one-way walk,” my recovering colleague declares. This is useful information that would have been helpful two hours ago.
I think of The Dog. He would love this walk. This is his kind of walk: one way.
I walk a little faster, knowing we must be getting close to the end, and that dinner will be available after all. Look around, remember this. Stop texting and breathe. I keep walking and at the four hour mark take note that the muse has not visited me this entire time I’ve been in Ireland. Neither Yeats nor Heaney nor Joyce have whispered a damn thing in my ear. It’s a disappointing feature of my life that I can’t will genius to take hold of me. I can’t harness inspiration on command. I can only summon compassion and generosity. I have those at my disposal whenever they are needed.
The next ding from What’s App is from a third colleague, letting me to turn right when I come to the road and head to the lodge where the buses will be waiting for the last of us. With ten minutes left to go, there’s a sudden cascade of information pouring through this chat. I’m too thirsty to be angry. “Yes, I see people turning up ahead,” I respond.
The older couple turns onto the road with four or five people ahead of them. The sun has broken free glaring the road ahead. From the right, a car horn beeps multiple times, pulling out from a gravel road leading to a small white house. I think at first the car is backing up to the road, but then two white horses run past the car, out onto the road, across the road and onto the hill overlooking the lake. There’s a silver hole in the sky where the sun is leaking out. It’s impossibly beautiful. I have never seen anything so arresting as those two white horses, running across the road onto the green hill. Only the last handful of us pilgrims get to see this. Everyone else is already on the bus.
I have come to the West of Ireland to go on a walk and not know where I am going. I have come here not knowing yet that I am not looking for anything. I have come here only to look.
Thank you for reading.
{|AC
My wife was assembling a jigsaw puzzle as I read your poem. I groaned with pleasure. She said, "What." I said, "Some people write so well."
I wish there was something bigger than "Like" that I could use to express my reaction to this post. Very glad that you got to experience the walk, and even more grateful for your compassion and generosity to share it.