Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
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I am swaying on a launch that has just taken off from Doolin, County Clare, bound for Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands. The light is dazzling, and it’s warm, even for July, as the salt spray flecks my face. The boat plunges, whacking the waves like a drumbeat.
It’s a notoriously wild crossing at the best of times to these ancient islands 50 kilometres off the coast. On a rough day, it’s daunting. I fight the queasiness and try to hang on to the rail. Two Frenchmen eye me with concern. The one with Michael Caine glasses swings over and gives me a seasickness pill. The unexpected kindness of strangers.
I think about the elegant Irishwoman I met briefly on the pier, her silk scarf dotted with horses. She asked about my trip, where I was going, whether I found the people friendly. As I boarded the boat, she said on my next jaunt I wouldn’t be alone. How do Irish people know these things? It’s not as if it’s the first time it’s ever happened. There’s been more than one of these occurrences, some in everyday places such as the Feathers Pub on Kingston Road. Strangers who read my face like a rune.
Now we’re all soaked in this Atlantic baptism. A young boy, about 8, sitting in the stern, ginger hair, round specs, straight out of a John Hinde postcard of rural Ireland, laughs and says, “I think I’m going to have a revelation.”
Finally we approach “the last parish before Boston.” The beach is as white as Sarasota’s, with turquoise waters, and white-stuccoed cottages. Curraghs, traditional lrish wooden boats covered with animal hides, are stacked like beetles; an elderly fishmerman repairs one of the boats as he’s helped by a young boy in a timeless scene. I head to the café for a cup of fragrant tea, watched by a Connemara pony tethered to a red door, and a woman sitting in a doorway knitting. It really is a bygone world.
Anywhere else this beautiful would be filled with yachts and tourists, souvenir shops and bars. But there’s hardly anyone around. The only sound is seabirds. As I wander the narrow lanes lined with weathered stone walls, I think of my life in Toronto, one that needs to change gears desperately, as the woman at the pier sensed. For now, I have only the donkeys for company. Sweet good-natured creatures.
When I do meet an islander and try to take his portrait, I’m always asked for money, or a whisky at the pub, or to buy a wicker basket, in exchange for snapping the photo. It’s an austere life here, the dark side to rural beauty.
I think the visionary quality of that day was partly down to Ireland’s ever-changing light – the kind that makes you see things in a different way, here one minute, gone the next. Sometimes you even doubt your own vision.
The late Nuala O’Faolain writes that one of her colleagues at The Irish Times was shown how to get home one dark night on Aran by people who had drowned 70 years before. Who can say if such miracles do, or do not, happen?
After a day of walking and chatting, my shoes filled with sand, I resolve to take the first step to alter my life. Making that initial move, and finding the courage to do so was like nudging a pack of dominoes, each one falling into place in a way I could never have imagined.
I love Ireland. To a fault. In many ways my experience has been like falling in love with a person. The people I’ve met here and my trips have truly changed my life. I love London, too. And Venice. And the life my husband and I now lead in southern England among horses and sheep and soft green hills. But there’s something about Ireland that makes you feel as if anything can happen, and very often actually does.
Like being invited home by a couple I’d met at the Horseshoe Bar in the Shelbourne Hotel to see their collection of Picassos. Another time there it’s meeting a Rolling Stone with his minder, off to his house in County Kildare to paint.
Part of the attraction is, as with all travel, the escape from the humdrum and daily responsibility. The walking of the dogs and the cycle of meals replaced by being able to go where the whim takes me, listening to the accents, meeting aspiring writers and poets everywhere.
But it’s much more than just holiday visions. In Spain it’s called querencia. The word for one’s spiritual home, where one feels most at home, where one draws strength.
I no longer need to escape to the Irish countryside for solace, but return as often as I can for the humour, the literate conversations, the Mediterranean flavour of Irish life and, quite simply, for the luck Ireland has always brought me.
In our post-lockdown world transformative journeys are more important than ever. For me, Ireland is much more than a place. It’s a state of mind.
Susan Hughes lives in England.