Student Bloggers

Currently Studying at: University College Dublin, Ireland 

Homeschool: Trinity University

If I’m lucky, I will spend my whole life chasing the feeling of wonder which fills my chest when I see something beautiful and new. This past Sunday, I had the chance to follow this feeling to the top of a craggy peak in the Celtic Sea: The Skellig Islands.

Made famous by the latest two installments of the Star Wars franchise, these remote islands blend rugged beauty, human history, and wildlife refuge into a single fascination. Part of what makes them so special is the sheer difficulty of getting there. The journey both protects the islands from the perils of development and over-tourism and earns increased respect from those who, like myself, make the trek.

I only decided to take this trip the weekend before, when I was mildly perusing possible locales to visit and discovered that the landing season for Skellig Michael (the bigger island) closed with the month of September. I called my dad and asked him, “Is this crazy crazy, or is this the type of crazy where I should totally do it?” He told me to buy Dramamine and go.

After a five-hour journey from Dublin to the tiny launch town of Portmagee and a blissful stopover in Killarney National Park, I spent the night in a sweet guesthouse run by a local couple. As Sunday dawned, though, I still didn’t know whether I’d be able to step foot on the island. The trips out into the Celtic Sea are notoriously rough and often end up canceled due to weather conditions. It seemed like the boat trips which circled the islands without landing would be set to go thanks to relatively little wind and rain, but the ocean swell was a crippling third factor which might have prevented the boats from making it to Skellig Michael’s shore.

I packed my bag and joined the 40-odd other hopefuls at the top of the dock. The captains were waiting on a message from the three-person crew in residence on the island regarding conditions, and they confessed to us that things were not looking good. I desperately swiveled back and forth between silent bargaining with the weather to cooperate and gamely trying to come up with a backup plan to make the most of my time here if it didn’t work out.

About twenty minutes after 10, the captains received a hopeful but not definite report. They told us that we could get going to at least see the islands, but there was no guarantee that we’d be able to land. We followed the first mate down the dock in a line and got on board and life-jacketed. Our boat, called Celtic Victor, pulled away from the dock on smooth water. Portmagee is situated within an inlet, so we rode by rugged scenery and munching cows for the first twenty or so minutes. Slowly, the water began to get choppier. Nervousness and excitement produce similar reactions in our bodies, so I knew that if I worked hard enough at telling myself I was happy and thrilled, I might trick myself into forgetting my anxiety. I let myself smile at the beauty around me, breathed deep in the sea air, and laughed every time we crashed downward. I also mentally prepared myself for each coming drop like it was a game, thinking: what goes up, must come down.

All the boats pulled up to the big island around the same time, after an hour of steady motoring. What we saw as we approached was pure artistry- vibrant greens, shadowed crevasses, whitecaps over submerged rocks, and a chemise of mist delicately touching the peak.

As we waited our turn to disembark, the first mate explained how to get off. The island has no such luxuries as a dock or a protected harbor; instead, the boat pulls up next to a slippery set of stone steps and bobs in the ocean swells as the locals help you time the right moment to step off. I was scared, but I stood up to go first.

We made a first pass in, and I stood on the edge with the first mate and one of the people from the island poised to help me, but the ocean swell was too high, and we had to back out and come around a second time. It happened so fast, then, that my adrenaline crested and careened through me as I was already pulling myself up the last few stone steps to the platform, clinging to the chain railing. I let out a couple whoops and laughed as the couple behind me fired up the steps in rapid succession, taking advantage of the brief moment of the reduced swell. After hours and days of being uncertain if it could happen, we had done it. I was on the island.

After a short five-minute initial walk, we came to the base of the steps and met the guide who would deliver our safety talk. He rattled off a list of risk factors long enough to encircle the island. “If we’re scaring you, that’s the point,” he said. After this, I let a good portion of our group go ahead of me. I’m a slow hiker, and I’m also quite afraid of heights. Then, I began.

Just like I coached myself through the bouncy boat ride, I used little tricks to keep myself calm and happy. The climb had 670 steps, so I only had to count to ten 67 times. 670 is a long way, but I am completely capable of counting to ten. I stopped as often as I needed and used those times to appreciate the views and take photographs. I didn’t have to ‘prove myself’ to anyone here- within a few hours, I’d never see any of them again. I did most of the climb with the sweet couple who had disembarked directly after me. They were from Australia and were about my parent's age. When we got to the beautiful green area called ‘the saddle’, we took each other’s photographs. 

The lesson I’ve been trying to teach myself is that you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I may hike painfully slow and require a breather far too frequently, but I’m still here, and I’m still doing it. I may be hugging the wall and focusing on my shoes when there’s a sheer drop on the other side of the path, but I’m still climbing. My cultivation of this mindset over the past year had taken me here. I was alone, I was slow, and I was scared, but I had found companions, strength, and perseverance.

I reached the famous stone walls and beehive huts of the monastery sweaty, hot, red-faced, and triumphant. So intense was my determination for endurance that I was actually surprised when I got there- I had thought that the climb would be longer. Things were a bit crowded, due to limited space up there, but I managed to find moments of peace and tranquility as I gazed outward at the vast, silvery crosshatch of ocean waves and the wheeling forms of birds on the wind.

I probably spent forty minutes in total exploring the history and beauty of the ancient monastery before making my way down. Descending the steps was another feat of will. I side-stepped down to keep my balance and tried to keep my eyes either on my feet or the beauty of the ocean- not the cliff.

 Getting back on the boat was just as quick and scary as getting off. We motored around the island to view it from all sides, then went over to circle Little Skellig- the smaller island which serves as a refuge for thousands of birds and is, therefore, closed to human visitation. In between the two, I spoke with the captain and first mate about their ship. I knew that if I didn’t come away with at least some knowledge of the Celtic Victor, my dad would be disappointed. The captain and mate patiently answered my questions and listened when I told them about my family’s background in the commercial fishing industry in Alaska. Once we’d talked a while, I thanked them for humoring me. The captain told me not to worry at all. “Not a lot of people take an interest in the boat,” he told me. “It’s nice.”

After a somewhat calmer trip in, we disembarked, and I began my five-hour journey home to Dublin from Portmagee. I was exhausted and a little stressed out from the drain this experience had put on my wallet, but I couldn’t be more thrilled. I was texting my parents paragraphs and posting an annoying amount of photos on social media. I kept thinking that I had accidentally taken the pictures with a filter applied, but I hadn’t- this much beauty was real. When I finally made it home, I recounted my experiences again to my roommates before collapsing into bed. I was euphoric. I still am.

“Skellig” means ‘rock in the sea’. Many an Irish tour guide whom I’ve encountered since coming here has joked that the Gaelic people weren’t very creative when it comes to naming. What I appreciate about this name, though, is the open-endedness it leaves to the visitor- you’re not told how to see it. Some people go to Skellig Michael for a hike, some for a religious experience, and some for a galaxy far, far away. The monks who populated the island for six centuries came to do penance for their earthly sins. The lighthouse keepers came to protect sailors in the night, and the non-native rabbits which populate the island came because the lighthouse keepers wanted a pet. I went to the Skelligs for perhaps the one reason that united every visitor- a sense of persisting wonder in the beauty of our world.