Alaskans find green pastures in Ireland, and the country's most exciting road sign

DUNQUIN, Ireland — I was in my 20s when I first imagined visiting the Great Blasket, a deserted island off the southwest coast of Ireland. One cold Fairbanks winter I read an account by Maurice O'Sullivan of growing up in that place, "Twenty Years A-Growing."

The storyteller made a big impression on me, describing cutting turf, hunting rabbits, exploring the island and adventures with his friends and family.

He said it was a Gaelic island "where the storms of the sky and the wild sea beat without ceasing from end to end of the year and from generation to generation against the wrinkled rocks which stand above the waves that wash in and out of the coves where the seals make their homes."

Seven years ago I actually made it onto the Great Blasket in the company of my daughter, Aileen, who was then attending college in Cork. We took a ferry to the island on a sunny day in late summer, walked through the stony ruins of the village and had every intention of  reaching the highest point on the island, about 900 feet up.

We never made it because a retired German headmistress, who didn't look like someone accustomed to the outdoors, had slipped on the lower hillside and broken her ankle. No one in her group was in any condition to help, so Aileen and I carried this lady down the slippery slope, which took about an hour, swatting bugs all the way.

The injured woman kept apologizing for ruining our trip, but I was really proud of how my daughter took charge of the situation, and that unexpected excursion with her is one of my fondest memories.

After we got the headmistress to safety, I felt something like O'Sullivan's grandfather when he lectured Maurice on the aging process and wiped sweat from his brow: "Did you never hear how the life of man is divided?" the old man said. "Twenty years a growing, twenty years in blossom, twenty years a stooping and twenty years declining."

Now that I'm in the last of those quarters — and because none of us knows what the future holds — I decided to make a return trip last month to the Great Blasket, this time with my wife, Debbie, and the three adults with whom we spent more than 20 years a-growing, Connor, Aileen and Anne. Ryan Hammel, Aileen's boyfriend, completed the group.

We had two duffel bags roped to the top of the crowded SUV because there was not a cubic inch to spare. It was great.

For 2 1/2 weeks we traveled from Dublin to Belfast and to the metropolis of Mullahoran in County Cavan, where my mother's family came from. As they have on other occasions, the extended Wilson family, the most hospitable people I know, made us feel at home.

After leaving Ireland more than a century ago, my grandmother returned for a visit with her three children in the 1920s, which did much to preserve family connections strengthened decades later when travel became easier.

My aunt, who was a mother superior by the 1970s, liked to remind her cousins, one of whom became deputy prime minister, that they had played a trick on her and taken her shoes back in the 1920s, stranding her in the middle of a field, where she stood crying until a neighbor carried her to the Wilson home.

[80 years a nun: My aunt prepared for her final journey with love and hope]

In Belfast, we met up with our cousin, the Rev. Des Wilson, a writer, Catholic priest and noted civil rights leader. In Dublin, our cousins, Aidan and Eugene Wilson, both retired publicans, remembered when I visited as a 19-year-old and drank three pints of Guinness. I remember I wasn't feeling too good after that foolishness.

On this trip, our itinerary included some GPS-guided excursions on hypothetical roads on which the car scraped low-hanging branches on both sides. We also went to the Giant's Causeway, hiked in Connemara National Park and rode bikes on one of the Aran Islands off Galway.

We saw thousands of sheep and cattle and endless hand-built rock walls enclosing brilliant green pastures. The lambs and calves attracted the most comment from the passengers.

As we traveled along one winding road on the Dingle Peninsula, my daughter Anne suddenly exclaimed from the back seat, "Hold A Baby Lamb," reading a hand-lettered road sign she saw before anyone else. I hadn't heard such excitement in anyone's voice since her sister, at age 7, dropped her jaw one Christmas Day and shouted, "I got a Pony Surprise!"

Yes, we followed the command and paid a couple of euros to hold a baby lamb, giving a small boost to an entrepreneurial sheep herder.

As for me, I was more than a little surprised myself at one point on the trip when I heard someone say, "Dermot Cole. Is that you?"

It was Bonnie Largen of Fairbanks, who said her friend Cynthia Klepaski had learned via Facebook that I was someplace in Ireland, an island of 6.6 million, and she should look for me. She found me at the Cliffs of Moher, along the west coast.

On the day we set aside to visit the Great Blasket, the wind-whipped ocean was far too rough for the ferry to operate and we had to be content to see the island from 3 miles away.

I was more than happy to forget about completing the hike we had started in 2010. We found plenty of other hills to ascend.

What was really important was the chance to spend time again with our children, a feat that becomes more difficult to arrange as their lives take them in different directions.

Columnist Dermot Cole can be reached at dermot@alaskadispatch.com. 

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.