Seven Hundred Stairs

I knew I was in trouble late Sunday night.  After spending the day sipping homemade lemonade with a new American intern (Gwen) arrived from Indiana, then watching children, collies and tango at the St. Stephens Park with Gwen and Amelle, then hot chocolate and window shopping, then home to meet my knew roommate from France, I finally settled down to blog, check email, brows the internet.  I ended up reading about the emotional and psychological effects of solitary confinement in an article by Shane Bauer, an American who spent twenty-six months in an Iranian prison, facing charges of espionage.  After returning to the States, Shane decided to investigate solitary confinement in this country, finding it difficult to express the differences between his experience, and what he imagined for American prisoners:

“’There was a window,’ I say.  I don’t quite know how to tell him (the prison officer) what I mean by that answer . . . Without those windows, I wouldn’t have had the sound of ravens, the rare breezes, or the drops of rain that I let wash over my face some nights.  My world would have been utterly restricted to my concrete box, to watching the miniature ocean waves I made by sloshing water back and forth in a bottle; to marveling at ants; to calculating the mean, median, and mode of the tick marks on the wall; to talking to myself without realizing it.”

I read that list, the list of simple, repetitive, mind-numbing activities, a list meant to contrast the horrors of solitary reality to the simple-pleasures-made-exquisite offered by the window.  I read a list that was meant to horrify and sadden.  But what was my response? Longing, longing followed by immediate repulsion, confusion, and curiosity.  Anne Marie, you do not want to be pent up in a cell for 26 months doing all those things . . . do you? Did I? Do I?  I have always appreciated simplicity, simple joys like rain and ravens, appreciated a life paired down from the balancing act of school, job, social life, future, past, bank account, college-student-trials-of-feeding-oneself, i.e. laziness.  Had I really descended so far down into that madness that prison sounded desirable?  Longing for solitary confinement, Annie I knew you had your moments, but this . . . Commence staring at the old coffee-splatter on the dry wall next to my bed, caramel colored dots and lines down the tan paint.  Do you? Apparently. There’s no denying that reaction.  You know that feeling.  So why?

Obvious answer: you’ve spent the entire past few days around new people, talking, dancing, eating, shopping.  You’re inner introvert is shaking your ribs of her cage right now.

Not so obvious answer: these past two days you’ve been forcing yourself to be social, knowing that if you don’t form connections now, they won’t be there when you need them—when homesickness sets in, when the unexpected goes wrong.  Annie, you want a place where you can’t be social, where no voice will prick the back of your skull, telling you engage, talk, laugh, smile, charm, laugh, listen.  You want somewhere that forces you to slow down, that doesn’t let you be social.  A place where you can sit and slosh water in a bottle if you want, not feeling obligated to go downstairs and pretend to be engaged in the all-French conversation, no obligation to move, or do, or think.  Let the rain wash over your face.  Listen to the ravens.

You want that place.

That, I can do.

Out came LonelyPlanet, as I started flipping for good hiking day trips near Dublin, somewhere I could run away to for the duration of my upcoming bank holiday.  I flipped back and forth, Slieve League up north promises spectacular views, but the three hour train-ride makes it impractical.  Same with the brown mountains of Connemara.  For ease of access and the promise of ruins and mountains, I settled on Glendalough, a 6^th century monastic site deep in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin.  I shut the laptop on solitary confinement and my own unnerving response, confident that tomorrow will bring relief, relief to the hitherto unseen pressures building up inside of me, and their suddenly desperate need for release.  Anne Marie, you do not want to be pent up in a cell for 26 months doing all those things . . . do you? Why Annie?  Why?

Even Less Obvious Answer: where Bauer used the window—“the patch of sunlight cast against [the] wall”—to find a world outside the basic survival of the prison cell—“reminded me that the world did in fact turn and that time was something other than the stagnant pool my life was draining into,” it was just that reduction I wanted.  I wanted to distill my life into a simpler struggle than culture shock, simpler than walking into pubs and trying to strike up conversation, simpler than being positive about eating dinner alone.  I wanted to fight against already exhausted, acid-packed muscles and the huff of my own breathing.  I wanted Walden more than Count of Monte Cristo, but apparently I’d let things get so far that one almost looked like the other.

At this moment I feel the need for a caveat: I don’t want to minimize Bauer’s experience.  The reason I’m so intrigued by my reaction is that it was so sickeningly out of touch with the realities it faced.  How the hell could I have that reaction and still think of myself as a compassionate, thinking human being?  Can I possibly explain this radical missed connection with reality?  I’ve tried to answer those questions as best I can.  That Sunday night sitting in my rowdy Dublin home, I wanted solitude.  I wanted simplicity.  So when the guidebook promised me hidden mountains, solitary hiking, and seven hundred plus stairs to attain the vantage point overlooking the Glendalough valley, my Monday trip was sealed.  Anne Marie, I dare you to think about anything but you’re muscles, your throat, and the view when you crest step 699, I dare you.

The next morning, bright and clear skies over Dublin’s lazy holiday streets, a quick walk to the bus stop on Dawson Street, an hour ride south to Glendalough, I disembarked at an incredibly crowded visitors center, families picnicking on the lawn by the river, children chasing dogs, parents chasing children, parents chasing dogs, dogs chasing dogs.  Thin-chested boys clambered over boulders and splashed into streams, dodging around cane-hobbling grandparents, and running amuck.  Laughing, shouting, chatting, barking, squealing.

Not exactly the solitary silence I had planned.

But at least here, I knew no one and no one knew me.  No social obligations and no pressure to engage.  Enjoy the people watching, Anne Marie, while you walk as quickly as you can to the trail head, past the spindly birch trees growing from the new-growth grass.  Past the stands of shaggy, moss-covered boulders.  Labradors crashing into the lake’s shallows after sticks.  Past boys hanging in trees.  Into the tall pines and the sudden quiet of the trail.

And damn did it feel good.  Crunching along the gravel in my thick-tread boots, feeling the easy press of each foot off the ground.  Looking across the lakeshore at the rough-veined rock of the mountains.  The mirror-like flash of the lake through the russet-bark trunks.  Yellow flowers on the banks.  I still saw people of course, but these were booted, back-packed trekkers ready for sweat.  People tenderly holding the semi-silence of the trail.  A dog barked from back down shore.

Around the upper lake and into the bog at the east end, stunted trees growing out of the wind.  Their fingers pointed west.

Bog east of the upper lake.

Past the bog and into the stone-strewn valley and the remains of a 1800s mining camp, short structures looking more like

odd geological formations than human handiwork, grown square and short out of the other strewn boulders, the matching gravel ground.  A sign mourned that the historic village had been destroyed in a recent flood, when the river feeding the lakes overran and crashed through the valley, torrenting with enough strength to unstack stone.  The river taking back its own.  The valley smoothing over the hammer-and-chisel scars of the last two centuries.  I felt a simple satisfaction that the sign did not intend.

I crossed the river as the ground steepened, the trail turning into a marked line of boulders one should walk one, uneven, unsteady, and ready to turn ankles.  My entire consciousness stayed on the connection between the stones and my soles, sometimes distracted by the growing burn in my quads.  I felt like I was climbing stairs to move horizontally, then climbing Goliath stairs to move vertically.

Ruins of the miners’ settlement.

I paused to enjoy the river splashing down among the rocks (while catching my breath), the trees growing from the crevices.  The clarity of the water.  Took off my boots, felt the chilly clarity on my soles.

Then I was out of the boulder field, up into the gentle sweep of marshy uplands, the wooden slats of seven hundred stairs winding over the ridge.

How many hundred huff-and-puff breaths later, no idea how far I’d gone, what tiny fraction of seven hundred I’d managed, but my knees felt like the ligaments were fraying one thread at a time.

“Is the view worth it at the top?” I cried to a man coming down the other way.

“It’s worth it at the top.”  But he winced as he lowered his foot down another step, and his tone sounded more haggard than triumphant.

But the landscape scooped down and out around me, the lake shining blue in its brown-and-green basin.  The Wicklow Mountains rolled away into the hazy cloud line.  I loved watching the cumulus tufts disappearing over the sudden horizon of the nearest ridge, shoved quickly along by a stout wind.

The last portion of the ascent I kept accidental pace with another group of young hikers—a woman and three men.  With the blond ponytail leading the way.  A fuzzy-haired young man, the least athletic of the four, took up the rear and called casually back to me.

“You must be dying in your boots.”

“Everyone told me, ‘Don’t take that it’s cold in Ireland.  Don’t take this it’s cold in Ireland,’” I growled with mock-grouchiness.

“Well, usually it is,” he grinned bearishly over his shoulder.  Coming up through a maze of ashy green bushes, we finally made the rocky summit, peering down over the sudden cliffs.  Gazing out over the landscape moving with cloud-shadows.

“Makes it all seem worth it,” said bear-hiker.

Summit of the hike at Glendalough.

But after a couple minutes of admiration we started our descent.  “Ugh, I think I liked going up better.  My knees want to kill me,” I wined self-indulgently.

“Yeah, the way down is way worse, ‘cause your legs feel like jelly.”

Even more stairs on the way down, awkward, unevenly spaced stairs that made me feel like one leg was always doing more work than the other, until I stutter-stepped to make the other lead the way, only to find that one suddenly complaining of unfair over-load.

Down, down into a dense pine forest, almost new-moon-night dark under the thick green branches.  About ten degrees cooler.  The clearings looked more like skylights in a cave roof than breaks in the tree cover.  A hushed, dark, dense silence with the clean smell of dew.  We past a fit old gent in shorts and a t-shirt jogging up the steps, the veins standing out on his calves and thighs.  He flashed into the light then out again. His legs pumping with graceful rhythm.  We all glared through our sweaty lashes.

Reaching the bottom, back in the valley where another river splashed down a series of falls, I took my boots off, let my feet drift in the icy water, rose, walked the lakeside path back to the visitors center—“It’s nice to see so many people out and about”—I heard one kindly woman say to the husband at her arm, strolling between knots of picnickers.   I crossed a bridge, and—noting the light—paused to snap a photo, when three boys popped from under my feet, shirtless and grinning.  Water soaking their shorts and their buzzed blond heads.  They waved their arms and laughed, “Hey take a picture of us! Take a picture! Hey!”  I laughed at them and walked on, bought a burger, inhaled a burger, boarded the bus back to Dublin, walked home, calling out as I came through the plum-colored door, joining my housemates in the living room, showing off my photos, unzipping my boots, “I’m going to be sore for a week.”  But also cured of solitary-confinement-wishes for a week or more, I hope.

To read Shane Bauer’s article, look here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer