Hiking in Ireland is a massively different experience to hiking anywhere in the American West. Sometimes it feels like two different planets. The ground here is a sponge, sometimes soft, bouncy, gentle, at other times a snarl of thorn and bramble, and then sometimes a slurping sucking hole that wants to eat your ankles and boots. As an American student studying for a master’s degree at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, I’ve been taking trips with UCC’s Mountaineering Club when the weather calls for anything other than a deluge of rain. In January the destination was Knockmealdown Mountain on the border of counties Tipperary and Waterford.
I arrived with five minutes to spare before an 8:00 am departure and sat in the last available seat on the bus behind the hiking guides. I had just moved to a new apartment in Cork City and I misjudged how long it would take to walk from my street to the spot where the Mountaineering Club meets for their Sunday hike. Out of breath from speed walking and sweating in the frosty air under four layers of clothing, I hustled onto the bus. I glanced back down the rows to try and spot Jessie, a fellow American friend from my program, but all I could see were the tops of tousled bedhead hair and beanies peeking over the seat backs and I couldn’t see hers among them. We’d arranged to meet for the hike. I texted her, but I knew it was probably fruitless because she doesn’t have a data plan for her cell phone yet. I’m not the type to call out. Nothing is more repulsive to me than drawing attention to myself, so I just sat. She was there or she wasn’t. Either way I was going on the hike. I’d find out when we got to the trailhead.
In Ireland, it doesn’t take long to leave the city. Rub the sleep out of your eyes and you’ll miss it. One minute you’re barreling down the carriageway and yawing through roundabouts, and the next, rolling emerald hills and little pockets of wood are swishing past your window. We began to ascend. The bus maneuvered its way around hairpin switchbacks and before long we were in a car park between barren heathered hills rising on either side. As I was sitting in the front, I was one of the first off the bus. I pulled my pack from the belly of the bus. It’s strange to feel affection for an inanimate object but my backpack has been my piggyback companion through many a hiking trip including 160 miles of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I always get a little thrill when I sling it on. It’s practically a Pavlovian response at this point.
I could see the trail we’d be taking. It was straight up. The line of hikers looked like little diecast toys at the top.
“Hey!”
It was Jessie, looking like she’d enjoyed a good nap at the back of the bus, thick curly hair barely contained in a beanie
“You are here!” I said, surprised.
I was happy to see her. I’m perfectly content to hike alone but it’s always more fun to have someone to talk to that you actually enjoy talking to. The weather was brisk, a biting wind. We paced, shifting from foot to foot, pretending to listen to the hike leader’s instructions but the words were carried off in the wind, something about leaving no trace. The hike began.
It became quite apparent after my first hike in Ireland why the Mountaineering Club is militantly insistent that you have proper footwear. It would be so easy to break an ankle even with good boots. And most of the time, there’s no trail. You’re just tripping and slipping your way over heather, rock, and hidden sinkholes. I’m making it sound like it’s something I don’t enjoy but it’s wildly entertaining, challenging, thrilling. This particular route was straight up, clambering over slimy rocks. Before long, the forty of us were all huffing and puffing our way up.
I didn’t enjoy hiking and mountain climbing until I learned to forget about the destination. That old clichéd phrase, “It’s the journey not the destination,” rolls easily off the tongue but it’s much trickier to swallow it, digest it, embody it, learn to savor the experience just for the pure pleasure of feeling the burn in the lungs, the pull and fire in the thigh muscles, sweat dripping down the back. Then it never matters when you crest the top of one ridge just to see another. On the mountain, all my senses are heightened. I’m alone with my heart and head in the hush and murmur of wind and birdsong, forced to look at the frightening stuff inside, mull it over, work it out, face it.
The views were spectacular at the top of the hill. In every direction, a patchwork of quilt squares in shades of sage, olive, seaweed, ribboned with dark lines, visible between drifting mist. But it was soon on to another ridge, everyone beginning to dream of their little bundles of peanut butter and jelly or chicken sandwiches, containers of curry and rice, the fruit in their packs. But it couldn’t be that easy, first we were hit by a random flurry of snowflakes. The party halted while people tore into their packs for rain shells, waterproof pants, beanies, gloves. But the snow drifted away as quickly as it had come.
At the next ridge, the word we’d all been waiting for was announced: lunch. I jumped to secure a seat on one of the few bare limestone rocks. Jessie joined me. We ate mostly in silence, fatigued and buffeted by cold wind, munching our bread, fruit, corn chips, hunkered and hunched down to shield ourselves from the icy air.
And then it was onward, this time downhill. We abandoned the marked track and began our descent down the steep hillside, walking sideways to keep ourselves from slipping in the wet and wooly foliage, fighting for footing, the hamstrings and quads burning. Every step was a potential slip and slide down the mountain or at least onto your ass. But after at least an hour, we made it to the bottom. Mountain conquered, I guess. It was almost anticlimactic when my boots hit level ground again.
It was an easy flat walk back to the bus along a trail at the bottom of the hill. By this time, the clouds had drifted away and we were treated to golden late afternoon sun. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be living in Ireland. On some days, it’s just another place to exist. But on that Sunday, as I walked with a friend, stamped pleasurably through little puddles, felt the warm sunlight on my windblown cheek, listened to the birdsong, the huffing and shuffling of feet and tired but happy voices, I really felt the luck, really felt the pure pleasure of being present in that moment, in this place.