Finding Inisheer (Inis Oírr)
It took me three tries to reach Inisheer (Inis Oírr), the smallest of the Aran Islands. On my first attempt, I took the hour-long bus from Galway to Rossaveel, boarded the boat for the two smaller islands (most people get on the larger boat to Inishmore, the big island), and settled in for the 50 minute cruise, headphones in, Zach Lowe talking me through the Lakers recent defeat to the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals .
On the boat, I drank an instant coffee, looked out at Galway Bay and the approaching islands. There might have been announcements but I didn’t hear them and when I did hear them I didn’t understand them, either because they were in Irish or because of the accent.
When we docked in a tiny stone-lined harbor, a man in an Aran Islands Ferry polo shirt said we were on Inishmaan (Inis Meáin), the middle island.
“Get off here for Inisheer,” I thought he said.
“What?” I said, taking out my earbuds.
“Off here.”
So I got off there and then got on the new boat and 20 minutes later we docked in beautiful blue cove with a beach full of pale sunbathers, shops just off the dock, pubs and bicycle rentals handy and it all looked familiar, so familiar that after I rented a bike and rode up a hill and realized I had been here several times before because it was Inishmore.
One of the few things age grants you is knowing when something is a big deal and when something isn’t. This wasn’t. I was still on an island and had no responsibilities. It was 73 degrees, with a burning sun that gave no fucks about the SPF slathered on me. I rode the coastal road until Dún Aonghasa, a stone fort some scholars trace back to the 2nd century BC that overlooks a cliff that looks like a god took an x-acto to the earth and cut straight down to the sea. Nothing but blue until Boston.
The second time I tried for Inisheer, I was on the bus, two miles outside of Galway, when a student texted that they were having an emergency. Could be a big fucking deal, I thought. So I got off the bus and walked back into town. (turned out okay)
The next day, however, I made it to the southernmost Aran Island, a speckle of land across the bay from County Clare. Small town, three pubs–including one named Eoin’s, my son’s Irish name–along with some bike rentals, ice cream shops, and sweater sellers. I rented a bike and headed toward the island’s most famous landmark, one my Irish handler said was worth the trip alone, the shipwrecked MV Plassy.
The cargo ship, which according to the Galway tourist bureau, was carrying “whiskey, stained glass and yarn”--and how fucking Irish is that–ran aground during a fierce storm in 1960. Everyone survived. And that should have been it—another shipwreck in an area with a history of shipwrecks—but now the rusted bones of the ship lie 100 yards up from the water on a stony store and are photographed by tourists standing in the ship’s red shadow.
It is pretty spectacular, the rust color set against the dark ocean background, where, if you peer across the bay, you can see the Cliffs of Moher. I took pictures. Said “whoa.” Went on my way.
MV Plassy, Inisheer, 2023
I spent the afternoon riding around the island, past long stretches of thousand-year old rock walls, before I went again past the small town and over to the Atlantic side of island where I found myself on the edge of the ocean, a field of stone behind me, and I decided to take a moment, to savor the quiet and the beauty, so I sat on a rock for a few minutes, thinking about how I wished my family was with me, how my wife would have laid her head on my shoulder as we watched our son skip stones into the sea, when, out of nowhere, a family of three pulled up on bikes looking very much like my family and I looked warmly at them, homesick just a tad, before the child, maybe ten-years old, pointed out to the water and said, “look ma, a feckin seal.”
He was right.
There was a feckin seal.
And it was feckin awesome.
Graveyard, Inisheer, 2023