So I was flipping through the latest edition of Newsweek over the weekend, trying desperately to find something, anything that wouldn’t be such a pain in the butt to blog about. And as I was flipping the pages into the late hours of the night, a single word caught my eye.
Irish.
Admittedly, that one word wouldn’t spark very much interest from many people but with me it’s a completely different story.
I did not fully understand the dread term “terminal illness” until I saw
Heathrow for myself. ~Dennis Potter, 1978
I guess if you’ve never been to Heathrow International Airport you wouldn’t really get that quote. I have though. Back in the summer of 2004, I went on a trip to the British Isles as part of the People to People Student Ambassador Program. I’ve always loved traveling so naturally I jumped on this opportunity to see a part of Europe in a heartbeat.
So, I flew into Heathrow with a group of about 20 other students on June 23, 2004. Then, get this, we had to take a bus just to get from one terminal to the next. That’s how big that airport is. People use mass transport to get from one place to another. Anyway, in that other terminal we hopped on our connecting flight to Dublin, Ireland, the country of potatoes, U2, whiskey, and Colin Farrell.
Now, I’ve been to many different countries in my life but Ireland is definitely one of my favorites. Why? Well, that’s an excellent question and in all honesty, I don’t think I can even do my own answer justice in this post. I only stayed in the country for four days before boarding a ferry for Wales but in that small amount of time I completely immersed myself into the Irish culture. Food, sports, dance, you name it.
Like Peter Hessler after being thrown headlong into the very heart of China, I was awkward at first, hesitant. Despite the fact that I had traveled internationally in the past, the thrill of being a foreigner in a strange country once again took me by surprise. I didn’t know the customs, places, or even the strange jargon spoken by the locals with their sharp, distinct accents. I mean, yeah, it was English but try making sense out of something like, “Leave your rucksacks in the coach, please and be sure to pick up your rubbish.” while suffering from jetlag after an 11 hour flight.
Yeah. Exactly.
I was, quite literally, a fish out of water, gawking and gaping at all the different sights and sounds. And if that wasn’t enough to clearly mark me as a tourist, my conspicuous American drawl stuck out like a sore thumb among the slew of Irish accents. I can’t even remember how many times a friendly and inquisitive Irishman came up to me and asked, “So, you’re American?” Aye, sir, I sure am.
Nearly five years later, as I sit reading River Town back in a more familiar setting, those feelings of being completely out of place come rushing back. True, I didn’t need to learn a totally new language just to communicate with the locals (although British English is arguably its own language altogether) nor was I stuck with only one other American in a foreign country but I understood what it was like to be the foreigner everyone talked about with the accent everyone was fascinated by. I got that. Because while Hessler was one of only two white men in the Chinese province of Sichuan, I was one of a few Asian students traveling through the strange country that was Ireland. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?
But amidst the sideways glances and passing smiles, I found myself mesmerized by the land and scenery. Reminiscent of Hessler’s own attitude toward the Chinese countryside, I reveled in the majesty of Ireland’s lush hills and brisk seaside. Coming from an area in which nothing remained green for long, seeing the verdancy of the land amazed me beyond all reason. It really was like stepping into another world altogether. A world that I wouldn’t mind at all being stuck in for the next 100 years or so. There were no electrical lines, billboards, or any other reminders of 21st century life. Just…the simplicity of the land.
One particularly striking memory I have is of a hike I took one day in a place called Glendalough, literally “Glen of Two Lakes” in the Irish language, “renowned for its early medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin”. Dusk was barely settling over the lake, the mountain fog slowly creeping down the hills. The temperature was dropping but despite this, my friends and I were determined to continue our trek. So, we kept walking, right through an ancient cemetery with crumbling tombstones and unkempt grass until we reached the lake’s edge. By then, the hazy mist was hovering over the water’s surface, the biting cold fiercely attacking any inch of exposed skin. But as I stood there, taking in the rolling hills poking over the top of the fog and the murky water below, I forgot all about the screaming protests of my freezing body and realized that this was about as good as it was going to get.
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