Howth Cliffs: A 6.6-Mile Loop Above the Irish Sea

The Baily Lighthouse seen from the Howth Cliffs, with Dublin Bay and the Wicklow hills beyond, County Dublin, Ireland.

Some things are easy to say and hard to answer. A reason to get up in the morning is one of them. I had the phrase in my head all week, and it followed me onto a train out of Dublin on a Sunday morning, ten stops to the coast, under the kind of gray sky that promises nothing either way. The walk began before I reached anything like a trailhead. From there it ran through a fishing village and up past cottages onto the Howth Cliffs, a path along the open sea before turning back inland toward the harbor, about six and a half miles in all. I had a question with me and no real expectation of answering it. What I did not expect was a conversation I had over dinner riding along the whole way.

Howth Cliffs Loop

Stone steps climbing through broken rock on the cliff path above the Irish Sea, Howth, County Dublin, Ireland.

Last night, I had Irish stew at my hotel bar and fell into a conversation with the person serving it, the way that happens when you are alone in a country that is not your own. The stew was made with Guinness, which is either a cliché or expected, depending on where you’re from. The conversation went a good deal further than small talk usually goes. I’ll get into that in a bit, but there was a moment when I could have nodded and gone back to my food, and I am glad I asked one more question instead. It was still with me this morning, long after the train had gotten where it was going.

The walk itself came in two parts. The first was cliffs and heather and a lighthouse sitting far below me on its own point of land, with an island offshore and the sea a distance below. The second was a street, with people carrying groceries in from their cars. Somewhere in the middle I stopped and sat on a rock, because of a foreign word that had been following me around all week. It hands you the small daily reasons and then stops there, with nothing at all to say about which ones are worth it.

The Journey…

The trail started at the train door. A recording with an Irish voice said, “mind your step,” which I did clearing the gap between the train and the platform at Howth station, and that was the first step of my hike. The harbor came next. Wrights of Howth with the flags out along the front, a crab market with a painted board for kids to throw at, blue awnings, breakfast being served behind wind-breaking glass. Trawlers tied up on the far side of the water. A Celtic cross with an anchor laid across it and plaques set into the stone all around the base, for the fishermen who did not come back. Then the marina, a hundred masts standing still in calm water, every one of them doubled in the reflection. I walked out of town on a narrow footpath, a stone wall on one side and a narrow road on the other.

The climb was gradual and stayed that way. Partway up, a plaque on a white wall for Balscadden House, where Yeats lived as a teenager, with a line from his poetry underneath worn almost off the metal. Then the town ended and the open hill began. A signpost pointed one way to Howth and the other to Sutton, under so many stickers that the arrows were half buried. The heather was out, pale purple across the whole slope, with prickly green bush and the ferns going bronze at the edges. Stone steps climbed through broken rock under the overcast sky. The water below was clear enough to see the rock under it, turquoise where it ran shallow, and Ireland’s Eye sat off to my left with its own small stack beside it.

The path narrowed to dirt between rope handrails, then widened to gravel and ran along the slope with the sea straight down on my left. The Baily came around the far corner, a white lighthouse on its own point of land, with Dublin Bay behind it and mountains across the water. A cruise ship and two cargo ships sat out in the middle. Past there the trail dropped into a sunken track between banks of ferns, green on one side and rust on the other, and when it came out the sky had blue in it for the first time all morning. Then the loop turned inland and became a lane, and the lane became a street. Groceries coming in from cars. Kids on bikes. White star flowers blooming through garden walls. The harbor came back with the boats where I left them, and the same recorded voice told me to mind my step once again.

Gratitude…

The train from town ran ten stops out to Howth, and I could not have told you one of them. My head was still at the hotel bar the night before, where I had ordered the stew and somehow ended up in a conversation with the server about the right way to build a salad. It was small talk of the best kind. When that ran out, I asked where she was from. Ukraine. Then I asked what brought her to Dublin. She told me she had come with her grandparents during the war, while her parents stayed behind. I took a beat. There was a moment when I could have nodded, acknowledged her, and gone back to my stew. Instead, I asked how she was.

What she gave me was not what I expected. Her grandparents wanted to go home. Not for the reason you would expect. They worried about their house sitting empty and who was going to mow the lawn. I had seen Ukraine mostly through a screen, reduced to rubble, maps, and casualty numbers. Without trying, she reminded me that behind all of that were neighborhoods, houses, neighbors, and lawns that still needed tending. I wonder whether part of us would rather not know how ordinary other parts of the world are. Then she told me about the past week. People in their community had been killed only fifteen kilometers from where they lived, many of them children. There is an elementary school fifteen miles from my own house. It has not happened at my home. It happened at hers.

I asked her one more question. What do they do for joy right now, if anything at all. Her face changed. She told me about the Ukrainians who have found each other here in Dublin, how they gather, how it has become something like family, something special. She lit up describing it and what it meant for her grandparents, and that was the part I carried with me onto the train. What I got was not the tidy version that is neatly packaged online or in the news. What I was given was a person willing to hand it to me as is, with a family and a neighborhood and a community attached. That is not something a person can go looking for. Somebody has to be willing to give it. I am grateful she was, and I am grateful I asked the second question instead of going back to my stew.

Reflections…

My trail-thought this morning began with a word I still cannot pronounce properly: ikigai. The closest western translation it lands on is “a reason to get up in the morning,” which I like because it asks so little of me. Not a calling. Not a five-year plan. Just a reason. A person, a task, a walk, something small enough to matter on an ordinary day. The original version of ikigai had been turned into something else, a tidy formula about finding work you love, work the world needs, and work someone will pay you to do. Useful, perhaps, but not the same thing. It seemed to me that we had taken something within reach of nearly everyone and turned it into another achievement to chase. I preferred the smaller question. On a difficult morning, I might not be able to name my purpose. I could usually name one reason.

So I keep ikigai and file the western formula. But where I part company is further along. The original version will help me list the things that make a morning worth rising for, and then it stops, as though the list were the answer. A reason to get up is not necessarily a reason worth getting up for. That distinction stayed with me. My list would have some easy entries. A trail. A burger. A pint. An hour with music playing while I had nowhere else to be. I knew those things were not equal, and I did not think they needed to be. Some things simply make life more enjoyable. Others ask something from me in return, or rather, I ask something from them.

Earlier in the week, I had spent an evening in a pub on a cobblestone street in Galway, with loud music and more Guinness than any one person should have, the kind of night I have maybe once in a decade, and it reminded me why. I was there for every minute of it and would not have traded it. It did not need to accomplish anything. However, the next morning did come with a price. The hike I had promised myself was suddenly in question. Three coffee shops and watching the spin cycle at a laundromat later, I was still negotiating with myself. What finally settled it was not enthusiasm. I simply knew I had not come this far to spend the day in a room, and I had no excuse worth carrying. So I went.

Two actions, and only one of them had to answer for itself. Somewhere along the Howth Cliffs Loop, I sat on a rock and scribbled my thought into a shape I could actually use. Three questions seemed to decide whether an action was worth taking: What did the action serve? How would I do it? And would it still hold up a month from now? Around those questions I drew a box for a lifestyle I choose, which mostly comes back to money and time. That line matters on how I make responsible decisions. Then I put the small pleasures off to the side. They did not need to pass any test. They only needed me to be present for them, aware that I am making a choice. I drew it in a cheap tourist notebook with a child’s pen that had six colors, and yes, I used all six. It looked less like philosophy and more like something a child might bring home from school.

It did not give me an answer, and I have started to think that is the right shape for it. I began the morning wondering what makes a day worth living and came down with a simpler question. What actions are worth the trouble? That one feels more honest. Some things are worth doing because they ask something of me. Some are worth doing because they give something back. And some are simply good to have while I am here. I do not need to make them equal. I only need to notice the difference before I decide what gets my time. The trouble is not the part I mind. Most of what I remember cost me something, and the cost is usually how I know it counted. The path continues.

-Ken