Beginning the day with an early ferry departure from the Aran Islands, I don’t think I knew exactly what kind of a treat awaited me for the rest of the day. Nate and I had encountered a school of kids at the station and spoke briefly, but we were pleasantly surprised to see them again in our section on the ferry. The rocky waters that had caused me anxiety and nausea just a few days before faded into the background as we spoke excitedly to the kids, exchanging differences and similarities alike. They had been on a language immersion program and came from all over the country to learn the Irish Gaelic language, which is still the primary language across the islands. As it dies out slowly in other parts of the country, young people are trying to revive it. I found it beautiful, for them it was trivial.
After saying goodbye to our new friends, we docked in Doolin for a short lunch at a local cafe and before long we were on our way to picking up our tour guide, Tony. Without offense to our other guides, Tony must have been my favorite so far. Tony would be showing us around one of Ireland’s most fantastical landscapes: the Burren. His education on the land was nothing short of admirable. Western Ireland’s climate, he shared, is one of the few hyper-oceanic climates in the world. Year-round rain, mild winters, and cool, overcast summers are its key features (which we had experienced plenty of).
A few things were particularly notable: the sheer amount and variety of wildflower species in the area, the historical significance of the Burren, and the rarity of a particular flower that made Tony stop in his tracks. Coming across the starkly cobalt colored little flower, Tony was amazed at its presence at this time of year. The Spring Gentian, he says, rarely grows at all in Western Europe, and when it does, it’s between a strict April-Early June range. This little flower is one that people travel thousands of miles to study. After a brief conversation with Tony, he leaned over and told me that I would likely never see it again in my lifetime. Tony spoke a bit more about the wildflowers, how rare it was to see flowers native to the Mediterranean growing alongside those who hail from Eastern Asia.
My favorite part of the day comes next: For his birthday, Tony recited a poem called “Everything is Going to Be All Right” by Derek Mahon. The poem reflects on inevitable changes, deaths, and life events. As the narrator watches a sunlit sky and far cities beautiful and bright, he determines that everything is going to be all right. Again, Tony did something rather remarkable. Having known that we had visited Belfast at the beginning of our trip and now have reached the vastly different Burren, through poetry once more, Tony made a remarkable connection between the two. He shared the story of an ice cream man who was murdered during the troubles in Belfast, and a poet named Micheal Longley who wrote for him and his shop, naming the wild species of the Burren and ice cream flavors side by side. The tribute to his life is widely regarded as one of the greatest antiwar poems of all time. At his recitation, a poet myself, I was overtaken by tenderness.
As we gave Tony a warm goodbye and headed over to the Cliffs of Moher, I found myself in a pensive mood. The cliffs themselves were nothing short of spectacular, but during a moment to myself where I stood with my back to the walkway and attempted to focus solely on the cliffs, I couldn’t help but notice the beauty of something else. I counted five languages in five minutes: Mandarin, English, German, Spanish, and French. The sound of crashing waves and whistling wind had been overtaken by human speech, by the sound of hundreds of people who had gathered in one spot to witness one beauty. I was reminded of the kids from the ferry and the poems of Tony, and with a few more moments of breath, I joined Deerfield again for a two-hour drive to Galway.