5 - We Did it Margaret: 7 September 2024

It is now 7.20 in the evening in Westport and I am physically and mentally exhausted.  Margaret and I have now climbed Croagh Patrick, and only one of us came back down.  I have kept my solemn promise to her and left her on the holiest ground in Ireland looking out at a view that could only have been made in Heaven itself.  Total strangers helped me to get her there and then they helped get me back down the mountain.

It took me 6.5 hours to get up there, do what I had come to do and get back the mountain safely.  What a day.  I feel more at peace because I know she is at peace.  I feel more at peace because I have kept my promise.

For the west coast of Ireland it was a beautiful late summer day – I presume it is still summer but it might not be.  I put my jumper and raincoat in the backpack next to Margaret.  I would not need them.  Because I am such an experienced walker, I assumed today would simply be yet another long uphill climb.  I was arrogant and I was wrong.  Croagh Patrick is a steep long uphill climb like no other I have ever experienced.

The is no simple easy rack that simply has to be walked and it is extremely steep right at the very spot where you definitely do not want it to be steep at all.  The steepest part of the climb s at the final ascent to the summit and getting to the final summit ascent leaves you completely exhausted.  But Croagh Patrick is determined to make sure that if you ever get to the summit, you must show complete determination to get there.  The “track” to the summit is a rock strewn waste land.  Every step requires you to climb a seemingly never ending steep series of rock “stairs”.  If you cannot climb the stairs, you cannot reach the summit.

But these are stairs with a twist.  With the exception of perhaps 300 metres of track that are strewn with rock but just not as rocky as every other part of the track, every part of the track to the summit is just like the final stretch to the summit = just ever so slightly less steep than the final ascent.

I was crawling up the final stretch to the halfway point where the 300 metres of “good” track is located when William joined me and asked how I was going and how old I was.  I told him I was fine – obviously lying – that I was age 75 and that I was taking Margaret to the top so I could leave me there.  William thought it was surprising that someone as old as me should be climbing Croagh Patrick, he insisted that I take his hiking cane and insisted that I drink some of his water.  As we neared the top and my strength began to weaken, I felt his hand gently providing a perfectly time shove ensuring I was able to safely climb yet another of the unending rock stairs.  I thanked him with all of my heart as I finally stepped out onto the top.

I sat down next to Marisa and she gently asked how I was going.  I answered and she gently prised my story out of me.  She probably guessed something unusual was happening when I pulled Margaret’s container out of the backpack.  Marisa took a home movie while I spread Margaret all around a cairn of stones sitting right in the spot with the best view at the top of the holy mountain.

I had a short rest and started my journey back down the mountain.  Marisa, her friend Martha and their spouses stayed near me, determined to ensure I got down safely.  Going downhill is of course easier than climbing uphill, but the further down I got, the more my legs turned to jelly.  Getting down safely would not have been possible at all without the help of my newly found wonderful strangers.

They seemed to think I had done something wonderful and insisted that Margret would be proud of me.  I knew they were wrong.  They had done something wonderful apart from helping me.  They were there to support a genuine hero called Martha who had lost half a lung to cancer and then climbed Croagh Patrick to give thanks for her continued life and the others had come with her to do something important.  They climbed it too so they could show how much they cared about her.  And just as an incidental, they shared their love with a total stranger.

So now I am completely exhausted and cannot write any more.  The beautiful people I met on Croagh Patrick demonstrated by their actions, the only rule that always matters – Everybody Matters.  Thank you William, thank you Martha and thank you also the spouses whose names I cannot remember because my brain is now in a fog.