The Little Things

Golden hour on Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands off the West coast of Ireland, was being made especially resplendent by the natural complement of blue water. Gaelic tossed across the breeze and caught my ears through the rippling curtains of a quaint kitchen. And there I sat, the epicenter of a pity party, wondering, what, for goodness’ sake, the heck?

I was at the beginning of my first backpacking trip, still trembly with a kind of manic nervousness: no idea what I was doing but adamantly optimistic. Forsaking the guarantee of a good time with new friends in Galway, I had come to Inis Oírr with the idea that I would finally find authenticity. To hell with tedium! Big cities, good riddance! I was lured by the promise of an old culture untouched, by time travel de facto. 

But as the day passed, my determined hope wore down like the weatherbeaten island—no fault of its beauty, to be sure. The splendor of brown horses crowning soft green hills was breathtaking, the feel of their warm breath humbling. The deep red rust of a genuine shipwreck seeped across rocks and reverie alike. And yet, as I stared at my frozen pizza, I couldn’t help but be gripped by loneliness and the bite of expectations dashed on the rocks of reality.

Traveler that I am, I don’t stay in one place long—including the valley of despair. Chin jutted, I stepped outside resolved to make something of my night. I was hardly down the road before I spotted a man by the water. Bent over a plank laid across the stones, he was cleaning fish in the falling sun. Something about this vision—glasses dangling on a cord around his neck, windswept gray hair—assured me of hospitality and drew me in. 

Paddy greeted me warmly, letting me sit and watch him prepare the fish he had caught just a few hours earlier. We chatted about his kayak-visit to his friends on the other islands, as though I was one of them. He boasted of the specialness of Inis Oírr, its famed stone masonry, the gold medal it had won concerning community and environment. He reluctantly submitted to being the island’s manager and proudly declared he would rather live nowhere else. 

As I watched his knife move with quiet and exact skill, flooded with gratitude, I understood that it’s not enough to simply show up, bated with expectation. What is authenticity without engagement? What is culture if not communication? One can travel through a book, see beauty in pictures; it is the people that make the human experience, well, human.