The Kerry Way

We’re back from the Kerry Way, several days ago now. All told, we walked more than 130 miles over 11 days and honestly, it was mostly glorious: valleys and hilltops, waterfalls and bogs, ridge lines that offered sweeping views of the ocean or the countryside, ring forts and wedge tombs and romantic ruined cottages, sunshine and rain, sheep and cows and horses and a few goats, villages and pubs, so many French fries chips. So many Cadbury bars!

Much has been written, lately, at least in the outlets I tend to skim and the books that find their way into my hands, about the spiritual value of walking.

Having recently walked the Wonderland Trail and just finished the Kerry Way, I think I have the authority to say, it’s all true. The thing about walking is this: walking is the human speed. Specifically, walking is the speed of human perception.

For example, gorse. It’s everywhere in Ireland. But the first day of walking the Kerry Way, I barely noticed these humble flowers at all, just felt the plant as it pricked me if I walked too close by.

Then, on maybe day two or three, I read about gorse in Mark Boyle’s lovely book about life in rural Ireland. Boyle mentions making wine from gorse blossoms, prompting me to note them more closely, seeing that their yellow color, when in full bloom, was remarkably uniform from plant to plant but also curious to see that in some areas of our walk, the blossoms seemed done for the season and in other places they were full on. Then I noticed — thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer — that the gorse almost always grows paired with heather blossoms which are purple, that gorgeous complementary combination delighting me as I tromped along. I was further delighted, hours or maybe days later, when I realized the purple of the heather unlike the reliably bright yellow gorse is actually quite varied, sometimes nearly a violet and other times edging toward brick red and often this variety is very close together, not clear if due to a difference in species or in soil or some other condition.

And finally, probably five days in, I actually looked for the first time at the shape of the gorse blossom, the way a single petal when the flower is in full will fan up and out like a crown and the three smaller petals below will create a kind of skirt and I thought to myself: it has taken me five days and how many dozens of hours of walking before I can see, really see, this one single flower. How much do I miss, in my day-to-day? Do I ever really see anything?

Of course, it wasn’t all gorse blossoms and glorious vistas.

In fact there were near daily moments closer to the opposite: the eternal up and down of ridge line bogs; Sam, mid hypoglycemic melt-down, kicking a Kerry Way sign and knocking it over; the stress of not knowing where we were going to sleep on a given night; the irritating awareness that our walk was gratuitously extended to circumvent some corner of a recalcitrant small holder’s property; the sheets of rain blowing sideways in Caharsiveen.

There was plenty of physical pain too: sore feet and backs and ankles.

But even in these low moments there could be another thing, an awareness that all my senses were entirely in my body as I walked. I found myself suddenly swept up into gratitude. Completely grateful simply to be a body moving through a landscape, entirely alive.