bloodline, pt. 3

(I wrote my second essay this semester on my trip to Ireland over the summer. There's no better way to fully review the meaning of that journey than to write blog posts about it. So buckle up. Click photos for better view!)

All the towns in Ireland have names that might sound funny to us: Killarney, Doolin, Dingle. Partway through the week we stop to hike more cliff paths near Kilkee, a tiny village on the western coast, where the sheer height of the cliffs is perhaps not as impressive as others we'd seen but in some ways far more picturesque.

The water is bluer than anything I've ever seen. The sunlight seems to bend as it approaches the base of the cliffs, turning the ocean green and reflective and deceptively shallow-looking.

The mothers hem and haw and hold us away from the edge, but we venture as close as we dare when their attention is elsewhere. When all I can see is rock and water and clouds stretching beyond the horizon, I feel oddly isolated, like I could float away in that moment.

Doubtless the subject of many tourist-y photos.

But even these cliffs, although more spectacular than those at Ardmore, can't compare to our adventure of the next day. Early in the morning we embark on an ambitious eight-kilometer hike along the Cliffs of Moher near our headquarters in Doolin. The day starts off windy and chilly, but as my brother and cousin and I pull ahead of the group, we strip off our jackets and shove them into our backpacks. The sun beats down, the paths are often steep, and before I know it I'm sweating despite my tank top and shorts.

We're mostly quiet on the hike, the three of us. Sometimes all that separates us from a heartstopping drop is a narrow wire fence. Sometimes we have to cross narrow creeks with suspicious-looking bridges made of wood or slabs of rock or even stepping stones and nothing exists to block us from falling at all. My brother swears at the top of his lungs, stops in the middle of a bridge, and pulls out his camera. He's incorrigible. We all take selfies and meander onwards.

The last stretch of the hike is a steep uphill climb, sometimes tilted so far against us that I fear a single misstep will send me tumbling all the way back down to the bottom. But we finally make it to the top, huffing and puffing, only to find that there's no point in trying to regain our breath.

The drop is three hundred meters. Doesn't sound like a lot, yeah? That's about a thousand feet. It would take mere seconds to fall from the top of the cliff face to the surface of the water below. But lying on your stomach, peering over the edge of a rock that juts out into empty space... I think all of our parents left those cliffs with some new gray hairs.

Yikes.