to lead us back a slightly different way than before. He wears Hawaiian
shorts and hiking boots and carries a backpack as big as his torso. Rain
had never felt so threatening before. It stings. My breath comes in shallow
gulps in intervals with the pain. Because the situation is so absurd—
merely moments before we were looking out into the abyss, drinking tea
and taking pictures—I start laughing. The whole thing is beyond me. It is
sublime.
Once I get going, it is hard to stop laughing despite not being
able to see or breathe. No matter which way I turn the wind finds my face
and gives a shove. The water sticks my pants to my skin weighing each
leg down. I feel stiff and cannot run regardless of the rain, because like
the journey up, each step down must be calculated. But we are rushing
and sometimes the thick clumps of grass trick us. Tomas carries a walking
stick, and I am envious. Tomas knows what to do. He uses the stick to
find hard ground like he brings us tea knowing we will be cold. He isn’t
cold in shorts because this is his summer. Tomas is a native. He gives
these hikes for a living. The weather does not surprise him at all, even
when it surprises him.
The English used to send the Irish west in a similar fashion that
Americans sent Native Americans west. The west coast of Ireland is
difficult to inhabit. The soil is acidic bog and rock. Trees are rare and the
jagged coast line makes it dangerous to fish. Here, the discarded people
starved, exiled from their normal way of life. They adapted, of course, by
burning turf for fuel and keeping sheep and learning to fish. But during
the mid 1600s, the west was a sort of prison: an unwelcome home for the
banished.
It has also served as a tomb. In the Archeology National Museum
of Ireland in Dublin, there is an exhibit dedicated to the petrified bodies
discovered in the bog. Most were discovered in County Galway, which
is right below County Mayo. The oldest is believed to be about 5,000
years old. The swamps actually swallowed these people. Flattened but
preserved, the leathery skin is still intact after hundreds of years. The peat
melted the bones, but the skin and sometimes the internal organs remain.
But these remains do not look like people. The bodies mutate from the
pressure as pressed peat turns into coal. In the museum, the low lighting
reflects off the glass casing like a halo protecting a headless torso, a hand
still wrapped in a fist.
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