How to walk 300 miles

a mountain moved me - part 1

In late August of last year I found myself sitting in a rental car on the side of a winding road looking out at a small characterful mountain through a misty sunrise. To my left a cross was stuck firmly into the earth of a hill and all around was wet dog green. I had been compelled to stop at this spot on my drive back to the house which my family were staying in whilst my sister was in hospital. We had sat all day and all night by Jessie’s side and time had become airporty, jetlaggy and blurred. I needed some fresh air to blow away the closeness of the hospital family room, the people stealing sleep through the day, their dinner plates on the side, the air thick with morning breath. I had driven past this spot a few times whilst going to and fro, praying and steadying myself, guiding myself from each unbelievable moment to the next. I pulled over and let the wind hit me in the face. It was cold and I was comforted, soothed by the moss like quality of the land, the morning dew a glass of water.

I googled the mountain, it’s called Mount Nephin (not pictured) and it protrudes out of the bogs and loughs of county Mayo. I was stunned that in the eye of the most distressing moment of my life nature was able to soothe me, still. I decided then that I’d like to walk up Mount Nephin and that it would be a place that I would see and be with my sister. Over the course of the next few weeks and months of early grief I decided instead to walk across Ireland from Dublin to Croagh Patrick, not Mount Nephin. After all, unlike us, it’s not going anywhere. Croagh Patrick better fulfilling the brief of a destination for The Pilgrimage - it being situated on the edge of the town of Westport, the home of my grandfather, birth and death in harmony.

After my sister died something struck me about the dependability of a mountain, their protective strong-woman, butch energy. My sister wasn’t butch, but she was strong and deeply loyal, utterly sturdy and reliable. I climbed Yr Wyddfa (Snowden) and Scafell Pike with my girlfriend in the first few weeks of grief, as if somehow that would take us closer to the heavens. Even summoning Mount Nephin in my mind’s eye can galvanise me, replenish a few grams of lost energy. I needed to have something goal-oriented to steer the ship of my body which felt suddenly so pathetically fragile, I needed to feel that I could trust the world again after it failed my sister so inexplicably. I needed too to try and fall in love with Ireland, a place that my sister adored. I wanted to replace some of the awful pain associated with Ireland now with something more positive, more fitting of Jessie’s memory. I also wanted to be outside all the time, even as the summer leant into winter I wanted to be able to trust in the ability of my body to adapt, to feel cold, hot, sweaty, weak, hungry, energised, strong, to survive. When I was walking I could be present and search for peace. I do wonder now if I also harboured a secret subconscious desire to walk back to my sister and find her living in a parallel universe, smiling and happy and watching a session. The mind does a lot to protect you from the truth of death. The starkness of it. Nothing more certain in life that you can doubt so much.

I spent most of the winter devising our route, laying maps out on the floor, highlighting each days walk and circling our accommodation options. I downloaded every maps app available to humanity, scouring them for evidence of superior routes or trails. It was the perfect task for a musician who is used to organising tours. It was absorbing and distracting work and I loved it, I also have a thing for maps. It was huge problem to solve, quantum in its endless options, follow the L road and risk meeting a busy R (main) road, follow an uncertain walking path and meet a dead end, take the longer larger path or risk a smaller, shorter detour? Stay at a nice BnB after 35km or chance a wild camp at just over 20km? Each small decision rotating the Rubik’s cube, nudging the problems and parameters of the following days. Piece by piece the route was formed, a way through, something uncertain put in motion, a blueprint for the short-term future and somewhere to put my flailing limbs.