A Walk in Ireland

On the morning September 7th, if all goes as planned, I will board a plane and fly across the ocean to the land of poets and whisky, the Emerald Isle herself, Ireland. It’s a trip I’ve been looking to make for some time but have never pulled the trigger on until about six months ago when the idea began to form of flying over and experiencing the country through walking, taking in the country mile by mile, step by step.

After doing some research I came to the conclusion that walking is the ideal way to experience Ireland, with its many unspoiled paths and ancient landmarks found deep in the countryside. The trail that really caught my imagination was that of the Wicklow Way, stretching 80 miles through eastern Ireland from County Carlow up to the suburbs of Dublin, and connected to St. Kevin’s Way. Most of the trip will be spent in the west though, catching a ferry from Galway to the Erin Islands, then down to Limerick and on the road by foot until Portmagee where I’ll catch a ferry to the island Skellig Michael and from there on to Cork before hiking back up the east to Dublin.

I’ll be joined through much of the journey by my dear friend Bay Root who has some family in the old country that we hope to visit. I do not have any family that I know or am in contact with. The Irish side of my family, my Mother’s, left even before the famine and all familial connection has long dried up. But being Irish was always important to my Grandfather Kenny who kept this quote from Seamus Heaney on his writing desk: “Be advised, my passport’s green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ to toast the queen.”

I’ll be documenting my travels and throwing it up on Dublin’s World in installments starting in October. I imagine that many of the posts will be made up of long tirades about exhaustion and questioning the wisdom of walking across an entire country. I also expect many an uncomfortable moment where an Irish person questions where I get off having the name Dublin. I’m hoping I have the most ironic experiences: meeting an Irish rapper in Dublin named San Francisco, but most of all I look forward to experiencing the country up close and on foot in all its beauty, history, and rain.

-August 2012