A plan to pray for the nation at the top of Croagh Patrick did not quite come off, but the climb evoked memories on the 9/11 anniversary, writes MICHAEL HARDING
RECENTLY, I decided to climb Croagh Patrick and pray for the nation, as we approached the monumental decision to accept or reject the Lisbon Treaty.
So beneath a rare blue sky, I drove the Pajero through Roscommon, Castlebar, and onwards to Clew Bay, where the Reek’s brooding shadow rose before me. The next morning was the anniversary of 9/11 – a grim day eight years ago, when the world watched people jump out windows in New York, and fall to their deaths.
I watched the Twin Towers crumble that afternoon with an Israeli woman. “Now the Americans will know how we feel,” she said, with black relish.
A little girl stared at the live footage with some confusion.
“Why is Barney the Dinosaur not on television today?” she wondered. “He’s on another channel, sweetie,” the woman explained, “but we need to see this!”
The Reek has also claimed its victims: one winter’s night some years ago, a Traveller girl died near the summit, as she climbed barefoot to placate an angry God on behalf of a sick relation.
Another Traveller told me that if you climb Croagh Patrick seven times you can go straight
to heaven on the final ascent; no more coming down, no more slipping and sliding on the loose rocks, along the steep decline.
I didn’t intend going to heaven but I took a rucksack, nonetheless, with extra socks, a video camera, a small photo camera, two bananas, a Kit Kat, one litre of Volvic water and a bottle of Lucozade orange.
Carrying all that luggage made me feel like a donkey, but I was determined to record the adventure. I was sweating as I climbed, so I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my waist. Unfortunately, my glasses were in the breast pocket.
When I arrived at the summit the glasses were gone, and I was unable to read the little instructions on the cameras, so they were useless.
Above the blue ocean, I leaned against the white gable of the church, but I didn’t pray either for myself or for the nation.
My mind was ambushed by John Updike’s description of the Twin Towers falling down, “like a silk dress sliding off a woman’s body”, and I wondered what would happen if the Reek collapsed like that, soft as silk, into the ocean.
There were old men beside me with purple faces, and short of breath. There were middle-aged couples nibbling at sandwiches and masticating in harmony, as people do, who have spent a lifetime in each other’s shadows.
There was a school group; young girls with confused faces and dishevelled hair, and boys with hairless chests and bare nipples. Some of them were already on the summit, while other stragglers were still panting up the rocks. Their teacher announced that “nobody is allowed down until everyone is up”, as he counted his flock like a demented shepherd.
On a mound of stones, a young man settled his bottom on his anorak and began reading psalms from a little black Bible. He had a sorrowful face, like a young monk already melancholic for the life he had chosen not to live.
There was a statue of St Patrick in the church, but the doors were locked, and nobody complained. People used mobile phones to pray, or to talk to loved ones all over the country. Everyone was astonished that the signal was so good on the top of a mountain.
And every phone call was the same. “Hi. It’s me. How are things? I’m well. I’m at the top. No, it’s warm. Yes I’ll see you this evening. I had a banana.”
I ate my picnic, drank my water and climbed back down. I arrived in the car park as the sun began to set; long red streaks of wafer-thin cloud lining the turquoise horizon, above Clew Bay. I left my phone number in the Visitors Centre before I went away, in case anyone handed in my glasses. But I wasn’t too depressed about losing them. They were an old-fashioned pair and I had long promised myself to invest in something funky. Besides, they were only for reading, and I can see well enough without them.
On a low stone-wall near the car park, two teenagers were pressing kisses on each others’ bare necks. And all the way home, every lamp post kept urging me to vote.