Aran Islands

July 12, 2010

“This is about as high as the tower was that I wrote about,” Luke says as our noses peek over the edge of the cliff, eyes mesmerized by the drop to the water below. Our bodies inch forward, wanting to be ever closer to seeing more, but scared what happens an inch too far. “No way,” Matt says, unsure if Luke was as dauntless as a jump from this height would make him seem.

We’re within the walls of Dun Aonghasa, a circular stone fort built around 2000 B.C. Just like on the rest of the island of Inishmore, the walls are stacks of stones dug from the earth, held together by nothing but gravity. It’s a rocky climb from the point where we dropped our bikes off up to the fort — practice for Thursday’s climb up Crough Patrick.

A young man with a light blue nametag stuck to his blue sweater has been sitting on the ledge near us, listening to our conversations about how we should all become trained cliff jumpers so that if the fort was under attack, we could safely jump into the Atlantic to save our lives; Matt wants to make a movie with that plot. I look over at the man when Luke talks about his tower jump — which was from a height of about 70 feet — and the man shakes his head.

“How high is this?” I ask.

“More than 70 feet, I’ll tell you,” he replies with a laugh. “This is 300 feet up. The Cliffs of Moher are 700 feet up.” No one has died from these cliffs, he tells us, unlike at the Cliffs of Moher. “Well, people have survived the fall there,” he says, “but they die a few days after that.”

Pádraic’s summer job is to monitor the visitors to the fort and fuss at them if they do what they’re not supposed to. “You’re not allowed to be up there!” he calls to an oblivious man walking along the top of one of the outer stone walls. “Man on the moon! You can’t be up there!”

To a girl curious how long it takes a stone to hit the water: “You can’t do that,” he says with a hint of regret and apology mixed in his voice. “It’s in my contract to tell you not to… But just take a lash. I can’t see anything now.” He’s looking right at her, but she understands. She drops the stone. “Seven seconds.” Pádraic nods. “About seven or eight, yes.”

He was born on Inishmore, about 15 minutes away from the fort. Growing up was just like growing up anywhere else, he tells us, and he and Matt immediately compare video games. Now he’s a student at N.U.I.G., which is where we’re staying; he knows Corrib Village — and its gate. He frequently brings up his Polish ex-girlfriend, and even compares Matt to her after he asks too many questions. He watched part of the World Cup final last night, “but then the Guinness was going too fast.” Though a black New York Yankees hat sits on his head, he’s not really sure why he’s a fan. So many of the Irish settled up in New York and Boston, he explains. That must be why we’ve seen so many hats. But to him, baseball is the most boring sport ever invented. Hurling is a real sport.

“It’s agility, speed, sweat… bones, bodies.”