[ Edited: 10/21/2025 this is a repost of a series i wrote in 2022, migrating it to the new nostr website ]

DAY THREE HIKE: ~15 miles
TOTAL HIKE: ~52 miles

i woke up at 8:30 feeling amazing. i was slow to cook breakfast, pack up, and leave as i had plugged back in to top up my batteries. everyone was gathering around the kitchen and picnic table area, and the conversation from last night continued as if it hadn’t stopped.

view from the tent

mark and adam grew up in roscommon but now live in greystones. they’re doing a brothers camping weekend along a third of the wicklow way. they asked why i was here and i said i was spreading ashes. “oh you have irish lineage i assume?” i told them about my dad’s family hailing from dungloe and finntown up in county donegal and my mom having ancestry in mayo and omagh. “ok you know your way around here. you’ve been here before. you didn’t say DUNGlow. that silent g gets everyone. and you said donegal right.” i told him this is my 6th or 7th time here and i can’t ever get enough.

adam asked if i knew of the dungloe festival, which i assumed he meant the 2-week long “mary of dungloe festival” which is like a combination miss america meets music festival. each county selects a “mary” which is like their “miss philadelphia” or whatever. and, surprise! philadelphia actually sends a mary too! i tell him i have, indeed, heard of it and have been dying to get there to see main street packed and partying.

“in fact, my cousin was a mary once!” (i believe julie went to dungloe to represent as philadelphia’s “mary”)

“oh geez, what is his name now!?” he quipped.

he and his brother worked the festival for 15 years, and their dad played in the band for brendan o’donnell, one of the most famous musicians apparently in ireland, also from dungloe. i wondered out loud if he was related to one of our distant relatives who passed away 6 or so years ago, margaret o’donnell, who lived right on main street in one of the few buildings that wasn’t a bar or shop.

connections everywhere. ireland is smaller than you realize (until you try to walk across it!)

both adam and mark, matty, and the americans all told me that my pace was insane. when i told them i started the previous day at the ruins, and how i ended up at that campsite almost 2 hours before them, their jaws dropped. maybe they were right. i felt pretty good tho. so i was gonna try to stick with it. they aimed to do at most 10 miles a day. i was doing at a minimum 15, up to 22.

i exchanged info with them in case we ended up in the same area again (i suspected we wouldn’t). everyone else took off as matty and i slowly packed up, the clock almost ticking 11am. this was maybe going to be a slower day. i was okay with that. matty wanted to walk together. this was his first time solo camping, solo hiking, drinking from streams. he was as nervous as i was to start. but the more you do it the more comfortable you feel. he thought i was a pro the way i was talking about it, but i assured him i just researched on youtube and consulted friends that knew what they were doing. i told him he was welcome to start with me but i aim to do 3 miles an hour. he was aiming for 2. so we parted ways.

i took off down the road, ran into 2 defeated hikers i knew were a part of a trio yesterday. i asked if they were okay, and where the missing hiker was. “she forgot water bottles about 25 minutes back.” “ugh, that’s a big hill.” it’s that hill that took me out of commission last night. “good luck!” i shout. as i’m leaving, bikers come from the other direction “ye okay? ye need water?” man i love those irish.

i walk through sheep fields and up dirt roads. i see the hut that i was trying to go to last night — and it was full. there’s no way to reserve these huts. it’s first come first served. i could have pitched a tent near them tho and hung out. i waved good morning and pressed on toward glendalough. that was to be the entirety of everyone else’s hike but it was my half way point. i thought i’d have lunch there.

make sure you have a lot of time if you go!

love them blondes

when i arrive, glendalough is way smaller than i thought it’d be based on the way everyone talked about it. i grabbed lunch at a place called “casey’s” and tried to send a photo to frankie and mike (unrelated caseys). terrible reception at the bottom of this valley. but beautiful scenery. i stopped in for a “wicklow hells” blonde ale beer and a burger. the beer took forever to arrive, and in fact didn’t arrive until after i was done my burger. rough service. but i was happy to sit and people watch. my shirt was disgustingly drenched in sweat so i didn’t lean against the back of the chair! i could have used a second beer, but i didn’t have 2 hours to wait.

monastic city behind me

st kevin’s ruins

it was a saturday with stunning weather. this place was mobbed. there are two lakes here, which attracted swimmers, birders, artists painting landscapes, families enjoying picnics and day hikes, and people coming to confess their wrong doings and seek healing on what i learned is considered sacred land. before the lakes are the ruins of a “monastic city” founded by st. kevin (who is also buried here) in the 6th century. it’s one of the best preserved and most important monastic sites in ireland. the buildings still standing (kinda?) are from the 10th and 12th century. i leaned against a rock wall and rested my bag atop it to take the weight off of me. i watched people for a few minutes take in the monastery and the lakes. and then i took off. i could see the trails in the vertical distance (high above the lakes). i wanted to get to the next town over called glenmalure before it was too late.

lower lake

the only decent view up here. kinda weird. trail was EMPTY too after a certain point.

i start my climb up. and it’s not a very pretty climb. there were but one or two viewpoints with something interesting to look at (see above). most of the climb up was a zig zagging incline around deforested areas. i found myself in deep thought during this period, about monotony. and needing to break out of said monotony. i also found myself thinking about relationships, past, present and future. and more monotony. finally at the peak, about an hour and half later, the landscape changed. the wood planks and my faster pace returned! gorgeous!

hello my friendly wood planks

weaving down the planks, back into the forest, it’s roughly 5:30. i had a lot left in my tank, but i wasn’t sure what the plan should be. the other hut was 30 minutes ahead. a town was an hour and fifteen ahead. and campgrounds were 2 hours ahead. i could have hit any one of them. i called the campground first. some guy answered like it was his cell phone “camping? no we aren’t doing that this weekend. next weekend!”. oh? okay. then the lodge. “sorry booked!” okay, the hut it is! i was fairly confident i could find a camping spot somewhere ahead but i took the sure bet when i crossed the hut and it was empty.

i arrived at 6pm, and since i didn’t need to setup my tent and had already eaten a burger a few hours ago, i plopped in the sleeping bag and went to bed super early. i decided i’d get up at 6 and go on a marathon day.

the “adirondack hut” was amazing, and they need more of them on the trail! at the same time, it was weird being so out in the open. i have never cowboy camped (with no tent). so having one side exposed to nature really triggered my fight or flight instincts. i woke up four times, each time by an animal checking me out.

my hut for the night. the trail to my left.

my eyes snap open at the sound of small feet. i rolled left toward the open face of the hut, with my right hand reaching back behind me hovering above the one-handed 4” pocket blade i had for emergencies. hahaha a chipmunk scuttered by the fire pit (which i wasn’t using). i doze back off. several hours later. whoooo whoooo. hand back above the knife. okay, just an owl. third time, the biggest animal, a deer was checking me out from deep in the woods. i had heard her rustling (and she probably heard me snoring). the last noise went unidentified and i stayed awake slightly longer with my hand actually on the knife. elina and i had joked that the biggest animal you need to worry about on the wicklow way was a deer, and the fiercest was a sheepdog. (it’s the reason she did this as her first walk instead of something in the states with grizzlies).

during that time i played coy with my knife, my mind wandered to bill. i started laughing to myself at how much, as a wee one, he loved playing with his pocket knife. going camping was pretty much just an excuse to whittle sticks. you’d watch his eyes light up when it was finally time to carefully take out his knife. bill always wanted to be strong (always was strong). he wanted to be seen as macho, no matter what. when i think about the life he lead (yes, much the result of his own choices), i do marvel at just how strong this kid was.

laying there exposed to the (not-so) wild in a $500 sleeping bag that can keep one comfortable in 28 degree weather, i couldn’t help but think of how bill told us he was once sleeping under a bridge. that was his home for a short period of time. i’m sure he didn’t have a $500 bag, $200 air mat, and $50 inflatable pillow. i’m not sure he even had a blanket. i thought about that and cried a little. i wished there was something more i could have done for him. i thought about the healing ceremony that my mom arranged after he died, where we all wrote letters to him. saying things we wish we said (or reiterating things we had said 1000 times) and then burned them. i recalled my letter, and how helpless i felt in the whole situation. i wished i tried harder to find him secure housing that wasn’t surrounded by others that were addicted and actively using (even tho they tend to find each other whatever living situation they are in… sometimes it’s a good thing and a support system; i suspect for bill it never would have been.) i wrote to him about how much it hurt me knowing we were selling an empty rental property at the time he passed away in an over-capacity recovery house that had a live-in house manager that was suspected of selling meth. i reminded him that we tried many times to help hosue him, but that every time, he broke our trust. he made it impossible to help. and like those letting go of past wrongs at the lake, i had to let go and realize i couldn’t have done any more.

but i also recalled the last time i saw him, 3 days before my birthday and that i did get to say “love you bro” as my final words. that gave me peace. i drifted off to sleep behind tears, hoping i can be as strong as him one day.

ant, me and bill

#travel #ireland2022