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I pick up my round trip ticket to Inisheer Island and chat with a fellow island trekker, Michael O'Laighearain, who is hiking across Ireland and who has great waist-length curly red hair and it turns out in spite of his beautiful Irish brogue was born and raised in
Chicago and didn't move to Ireland until he was 18. He is now 23. Like so many of the Irish, Michael is charming and soft-spoken; I often have to lean closer to him as we speak over the roar of the ferry motor. Mairead, a women perhaps in her fifties, points out that the tide is so low that the Ferry will have to anchor a ways out from the pier and a large curragh will be used to take us piecemeal to the ferry. A bus load of French kids disembarks, and we all begin
the laborious process of loading and unloading. It takes four trips of the curragh and a half hour of our morning before we finally head out to the island, which takes another half hour. Michael and I continue to converse with Mairead who has a tea room on Inisheer. She
tells us that there are 300 full-time residents on the island, two schools, cable T.V., landing strip, two pubs, and of course a Catholic church. Her late husband was an islander whose living was made by hauling out seaweed with burros and then processing it for iodine and other by-products. It's an old and laborious
tradition but apparently can be a fair living. She invites us for tea, "on the house," and Michael and I have delicious hot tea and scones and strawberry jam. Mairead provides us with a map of special sights on the island and after Michael's typical expression of "Oh, Gee" when he's pleasantly
surprised by something - in this case Mairead's generosity - we head off to spend the rest of the afternoon on the island. The ferry doesn't return until 4:45 p.m. The island is very walkable since it's only 1500 total acres. The Medieval church is gone but the cemetery remains, albeit an odd one that is actually a dunes of over 20 feet in which layers of burials going back to at least the 10th century are stacked up one on top of the other. We also explore O'Brien's Castle, which was built in the 14th century by descendants of Brien Boru, the High king of Ireland, who defeated the Danes in Clontarf in 1014. While the upper two floors no
longer exist because they were made of timber that have long-since deteriorated, the castle is in reasonably good condition, and it is an odd experience to wander about this ancient place so freely as one can often do in antiquities in Ireland. Michael tells me that people are respectful of old places in Ireland, that they seldom graffiti things because they
believe the "spirits" remain in them and to desecrate would bring bad luck. In any case, I have seen almost no graffiti or desecration of antiquities in Ireland although I have observed litter. In fact, Ireland could use an Adopt-a-Highway program. The country is
a little disheveled. Getting rid of things - big and little - too often means leaving it by the side of the road. The sun continues to bear down on us and while the breeze off the ocean is cool we are parched and head for the pub. The pub's owner is friendly and "paints" a nice little "top" shamrock in the foam of my Guinness. He also helps us move a table outside and into the sun where I take self-timed photos of us, and Michael tells me a limerick that touches on Ireland's "Troubles." "There was a Protestant woman named Alice who peed in a Catholic chalice. It was physical need which prompted the deed; 'twas not sectarian malice." He also assures me as others have that 99% of the people of the Republic want a stop to the Troubles. As Michael says of the IRA, "They're none of them working. They've too much time on their hands." We take a slow, long route back through the fields of Inisheer, and are amazed at the head-high walls that surround the tiny fields, many of them no more than 100' x 100'. Work on the island must be a great struggle; to work such small fields and to raise so
few livestock seems so inefficient by U.S. standards. But they drive those tractors through those narrow lanes, often with no more than a foot of space on either side of the big rear tires. We make one last stop at Mairead's to buy some scones to take on the ferry, and she gives us tea while we sit and chat with Marie, a Dutch woman who is on holiday alone, or as she puts it, "Taking time to take stock, to do some introspection." She
is a nurse, and she says she is tired of the stress of dealing with patients who are brought into her ward for the brain-damaged. It is obvious that we would have gotten full disclosure of her life had we been able to spend another ten minutes with her. The tide is in, and the ferry back is a simple matter of pier-to pier delivery. Michael and I meet later for dinner after he has set up his camp for the night, and then we head for the Irish music at the pubs of Doolin. The Irish music tradition is like the jazz tradition. People simply bring
their instruments and sit in with the musicians. McNabb's and McDermott's both feature trios and they play two full hours, which is amazing for a Tuesday night in little Doolin. The town is just a strip of houses stretched along a road in the middle of nowhere, yet the pubs fill up every night of the year - and
standing room only during peak tourist season. Michael and I exchange addresses - his mother lives in E. Lansing, MI - and I tell him I will send his mother a photo of him. We shake hands, and I bid him a fond farewell because he certainly has helped to make my Inisheer day a memorable one. Lots of walking, but no biking miles today.
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