Two Weeks in Ireland: Taking Chances, Chasing Horizons and Hanging Off Cliffs
Teampall Bheanáin, Inis Mór — thought to be the smallest church in Ireland
This is a retrospective reflection on a trip across Ireland in 2017. Locations photographed include Dublin, County Dublin, Carna, Connemara, and the Aran Islands, County Galway, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, Glendalough, County Wicklow, the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, County Clare.
One of Dublin’s famous colorful doors, Temple Bar
It was the summer of 2017, and I had just accelerated through an event I’d been both anticipating and dreading for four years. I had made the short walk across the stage, shaken a few hands, and turned the tassel to the other side of my cap — an enormous and yet oddly anonymous moment amidst a sea of 22-year-olds making exactly the same transition.
My college career was over. I was lost. I was free.
The day after my graduation, with little sleep, I was on a bus to the airport with a handful of my classmates, hurtling towards the edge of the cliff that was my future. I had made a snap decision six months ago to sign up for this trip, the two-week final component of a traditional Irish arts course.
At the time, I remembered how someone had tried to talk me out of going — “You have your whole life to travel more, no need to rush it” — and now, at the end of this chapter and the bottom of my bank account, I’d never been more grateful that I’d listened only to myself.
Lower Lake, Glendalough, Wicklow Mountains
I left for Ireland exhausted, invigorated, and more than a little miserable. While there was nothing I’d rather do than chase new beginnings to another country, I also felt like I was leaving nothing behind me but a trail of dead ends: an end to the education I’d been tirelessly invested in for the past four years, a dead-end job that had paid in little more than small-town judgments all through college, and a dead-end relationship that was making me sick to my stomach, but which I didn’t have the experience or perspective to cut off. I had worked hard to make it here, but it felt like I’d slowly been sacrificing myself along the way.
Monastic settlement, Glendalough
Traveling to Ireland felt like an escape back into myself, back to the exploratory, unafraid person I had been before the stress of the past few semesters, before the demeaning monotony of minimum-wage work, before the discouragement of an ill-matched attempt at dating.
As my plane lifted across the Atlantic, I could feel all that tension loosening a little. But there was still a hard pit in my stomach — I knew that when I landed back home again in two weeks, all those dead ends would still be waiting to weigh me down. And I had no idea where to go next or how to break free.
Views over the walled city of Kilkenny from the Round Tower
While I didn’t want that dread to cloud my excitement at the chance to discover a new country, I did let it sit with me for a little too long after I landed. For a day or two, I dragged it behind me like jet lag.
I carried my dread with me on the hop-on, hop-off tour around Dublin, a city that felt almost instantly like home even though I was seeing it for the first time. I took it along to the Jameson distillery tour, where I knocked it back with a few shots of stinging Irish whiskey. I let it keep me in my hotel room that first night in the city, ending the day’s exploration early instead of extending it a little longer.
At the Book of Kells, where I held my phone up distractedly, searching for a signal to contact someone who hadn’t even checked if I’d landed, a couple in their thirties shook their heads and rolled their eyes at me. Stupid American kids, those eyes seemed to say. Can’t appreciate what’s right in front of them. While their judgment stung, I realized they were right.
Here I was, across the ocean, letting what I’d left behind get in the way of where I was now — holding on to my old life instead of immersing myself fully in a new adventure. Because really, that’s what this was.
The past, which up until this moment, I’d still considered the present, was already gone. My life as it was — wondering where I fit into the world, trying to force things that, themselves, didn’t fit into mine — had already moved into the next phase.
Here in Ireland, where I was lucky enough to have fourteen days in that in-between, it was time to let go.
Connemara National Park, County Galway
Once I realized this, the pit it my stomach began to dissolve, and I could feel all the dead ends unraveling. There was nothing holding me back but myself. I was free.
(Above and below) Scenic Views of Maínis and Carna, County Galway
When I started to let go, Ireland opened up like a fresh flower — and little by little, so did I. I finished pints in colorful pubs and went dancing in Dublin nightclubs. I made an effort with my trip mates, who started out as strangers and quickly became friends. From the bustling streets of Dublin, the rolling fields of County Meath, and the quiet forest paths of County Wicklow to the majestic mountains and coasts across the country in County Galway, I felt Ireland awakening my spirit of adventure and working its way into my heart.
Our trip was unforgettable — we left the unique, modern excitement of Dublin after our first week to journey across to the Gaeltacht in Connemara, a region where the Irish language is not only preserved, but is the predominant spoken vernacular.
We stayed with a welcoming host family in the tiny coastal town of Maínis, where the bus whipped around the curves of the narrow roads with alarming speed, and we traveled by ferry to the Aran Islands, where the water was an impossible shade of blue.
With every new step and sight, I felt braver, bolder, and I let myself be swept along by the adventure.
I biked up steep inclines on Inis Mór, watching the gemstone-blue sea glisten beside me. I belly-crawled to the edge of a 330-foot drop by Dún Aonghasa, feeling the pull of gravity and the gravitas of the ancient fort rising behind me.
The Path to Teampall Bheanáin, Inis Mór
Around Dún Aonghasa, Inis Mór
I sipped cold cider and watched talented step-dancers, storytellers, and singers performing and preserving the rich culture of their country. I climbed to the top of the Round Tower to stare out over the walled city of Kilkenny, and I walked its colorful, cobblestone streets. I wandered across wide, unspoiled beaches in Carna, on the West coast of Ireland, and witnessed its thriving marine life.
I picked my way over the melancholy lunar landscape of the Burren in County Clare, held my breath in a pitch-black burial chamber at Newgrange, trailed my fingers through the long grasses at the Hill of Tara, and dangled my feet over the Cliffs of Moher.
(Above) The Burren, County Clare (Below) The Cliffs of Moher, County Clare
I wasn’t quite brave enough to sing a folk song solo in a Connemara village pub, but I was brave enough to say goodbye to someone at home and to embrace the freedom of opportunities and adventures around me — to Irish step-dance on a stage, to make an uphill pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Well, to kiss a stranger after a few too many pints, to climb to the top of a boulder by the sea and throw my weight into the wind.
In each of these moments, with the rugged green mountains rising up around me or the wild Atlantic wind in my hair, traversing new streets or rocky shores, laughing with strangers and friends, I felt freer and more myself than I had since the last time I left had left for a country across the sea. But this time, as I boarded my flight, I knew things wouldn’t go back to the way they were before.
On the plane home, I took out my notebook and began to write a list — of the changes I wanted to make, the chances I wanted to take. Like chasing all my inklings and inclinations around the world, and not listening to the voices that tried to hold me back. Like letting myself live more bravely, more unapolagetically, and letting go of the rest.
Beyond the window, behind the wing of the plane, the sky stretched endlessly blue; the world opened wide.
This is me, I thought, and I flew, open-ended, into the future.
