I’ve Been Dingled

Thirty-six years old—Dingle, Ireland

The wood floor nagged so loudly beneath my feet, the old girl sounded ready to give way. The three-hundred-year-old Ballintaggart Manor has been converted into a hostel, but it feels like a home, the kind you might find in the pages of a cozy fireside mystery. Sunlight poured into my dorm room through two picture windows, and the view made me laugh out loud; if I’d seen a painting of the Irish countryside that looked like this, I would have accused the artist of nostalgic exaggeration. Outside the windows, black-and-white cows and roly-poly white sheep munched on grass, which grew in overzealous green pastures. The gentle pastures rolled down, down, down to the lovely puddle of Dingle Bay, where one long, low cloud skimmed the water. An old stone watchtower watched over it all. Everything was silent, save the occasional moo of a cow.

I was quietly unpacking yesterday when Jukka and Janet noised in, discussing their plans for the afternoon. Jukka, a young man from Finland with a contagious good humor, asked for my input, as if we were old friends and it was understood that I’d join them. Janet is a lively, up-for-whatever, recent college grad from Texas. I declined to join them for a hike, wanting some time alone to explore the town. However, I agreed to meet them later to go to a small concert.

I whiled away the afternoon with a stroll into town, just a mile away. Dingle’s diminutive waterfront is lined with boxy shops and pubs, each painted a different color. Small fishing boats bob in the bay. The town is surrounded by green hills that disappear into low clouds, but I sense promise hidden there. The scenery reminds me of Juneau, making me homesick for a place that was never really home.

On my journey, internal peace has come and gone, and come again. But there’s an external peace to this place, which is settling into me with every breath of the breezy sea air. Instinct tells me that the two worlds through which I’ve been traveling for nearly a year—the internal and the external—have found their harmonic meeting place in Dingle. I’d planned to visit a couple of other towns in Ireland, but I know now that I’ll never see them, not on this journey. I might not have a home anymore in the traditional sense. But if a wanderer can experience anything like home—a place where she sighs with the comforting feeling that she has returned to a place where she belongs—then for me surely Dingle is it.

In the evening, Janet, Jukka, and I took the hostel van into town. We were joined by Gareth, a soft-spoken Englishman with dark good looks and a serious air. The van dropped us off on the waterfront, and from there we walked to a little bit of a church, the venue for the concert.

The bill featured an eclectic handful of musicians: an American harpist, a Northern Irish folk guitarist, a German violinist, and a local bagpiper named Owen. While all of them were talented, Owen’s slow airs reached into my soul and found my Celtic ancestors weeping there, while his jigs found them dancing and laughing until I felt possessed and nearly leapt to my feet.

Jukka, who’d been to a concert at the same church last week, regularly leaned toward the rest of us with a grin to say, “I love this song” or “This is the one I was telling you about” or “Do you like it?” It was slightly annoying to be interrupted in my enjoyment of the concert so often, just to be told how enjoyable the concert was. But Jukka’s enthusiasm was hard to resist.

In between comments, he pointed out the tall window behind the altar. Sparrows darted back and forth across the pale evening sky. They kept changing direction, like auguries unsure of their message: time to go home; not done flying; no, time to go home; no, not done flying.

After the concert, as we walked out of the church, Jukka suggested we go pub hopping.

“Definitely. I can’t wait to have my first pint of Irish ale,” Janet said.

“I don’t know if I can finish a whole pint,” I said. “I’m not much of a beer drinker.”

To which Jukka loudly replied, “Don’t lie to me. I’m tired of you stumbling home drunk every night, staying in the pubs until all hours, leaving me with the children!” A middle-aged woman who was also leaving the concert turned to stare. Jukka leaned toward her and spoke in a confiding tone, “I’ve been putting up with this for nine years because I promised to stay with her for better or worse.” He threw a devoted arm over my shoulder and squeezed.

Rolling her eyes, the woman asked me, “Is this your first date?”

“I barely know him.”

“How can you say that, after all we’ve been through together?!”

The woman pursed disapproving lips and hurried off while I doubled over with laughter.

The four of us then laughed our way down the street, debating which pub to visit. It wasn’t a simple choice: there are more than four-dozen pubs in Dingle, even though there are fewer than 1500 residents. We decided to start at An Conair (pronounced “On Conner”).

Because this is Ireland, I ordered a pint. I could only finish half of the dark amber ale, which prompted my companions to start calling me Half-Pint.

“Great,” I said. “I’m going to get laughed out of Ireland.”

“No, no,” Gareth said. “In Ireland the people laugh with you, not at you.”

“It’s no wonder they laugh so much,” I said. “When I got off the ferry in Cork, the pubs were full of people drinking pints—at nine a.m.! Beer for breakfast? What’s up with that?”

“But this is quite normal in Ireland,” Jukka said. “A full Irish breakfast can include eggs, beans, sausage, bacon, toast, and a pint of ale, maybe two.”

No wonder I feel so at home here, I thought, once again surrounded by heavy drinkers.

After everyone finished their pints—except me—we walked to another pub called “The Little Bridge.” (More accurately, it’s called “The Little Bridge” in Gaelic, but I can neither pronounce nor remember how to spell it.) It’s named for the little bridge across the street, which crosses the stream that runs through town. When we arrived Owen was there, playing the bagpipes again, along with a backup guitarist and accordionist.

Gareth suggested we sit so close to the band that I worried the musicians would ask us to back off, but he laid a staying hand on my arm and said, “Just wait, you’ll thank me in an hour.” He was right. As music filled the pub, so did people, until we were so hemmed in I couldn’t shift from one butt cheek to the other without bumping into someone, who bumped into someone else, who knocked over a drink.

Gareth bought us all a round. I ordered a Bailey’s Irish Cream, forced to admit that Irish ale was too rich for my blood. When I thanked him for the drink, he said, “A friend once told me giving is like a river: you dip in when you need something, then put something back later so someone else can dip in downstream.”

“So you’re saying I owe someone else a drink?” I asked.

“Did I hear ye say you’re buyin’, then?” an elfin-faced Irish girl asked me.

“Aw, you’re scarin’ her, Maureen,” shouted the plump young woman next to her. “Don’t mind her, she’s jest TEE-zin ye!”

With that, the pair joined our group. Both of them became quite drunk, but rather than making them annoying and unruly, each drink only enhanced their friendliness. The elfin Maureen apologized several times for being “so pissed.” She and her friend are from Cork, where they’re studying for their teaching certificates. Maureen knows five languages: “English, Gaelic, French, German, and Japanese. I’m very excited to learn Spanish next.”

“I’m surprised you want to be a schoolteacher. You sound like you should be a translator, or a linguistics professor.”

“Nah, I love children. And if I teach, I’ll have summers off for what I love to do best: travelin’. That’s where I want to use m’ languages.”

Between sets, she leaned over to light a cigarette for Owen. When she was out of earshot, Gareth leaned my way and pronounced her “really sweet.” He looked half in love, and I was mildly surprised: she was so chattie and chirpie, while he was so quiet and serious. I suppose opposites attract, but only Jane Austen has ever made me consider that a sensible thing.

Maureen asked Owen if she could sing “Black is the Color.” This is the way of pubs in Dingle, where there’s not a strict division between performer and audience, and anyone game enough to join in is welcome. Maureen sang the traditional Celtic ballad with tear-jerking feeling: “Black is the color of my true love’s hair . . . His lips are like some roses fair . . . He has the sweetest smile and the gentlest hands . . . I love the ground whereon he stands.” It was a song about romantic love, yet she was clearly singing about her love for Ireland. Do I love my own country with such passion? I feel so adrift it’s hard to say anymore.

As the evening went on, the room turned into a roller coaster, a Tilt-a-Whirl, a Bouncy House of human joy, everyone clapping and laughing, stomping and swaying. I leaned toward Gareth’s ear and shouted to be heard, “One thing I love about Irish music: no other music can make me feel so happy and so melancholy at the same time, no matter what the song is.”

He nodded with enthusiasm. “I know just what you mean. I call Irish music ‘my blues.’”

Then the band invited an American musician to join them, a blues singer from New Jersey who’s come to Dingle for the upcoming Irish Music Festival. The crowd parted to create a wide berth for the morbidly obese man, who made his way to the front with the help of a burled wood cane. As the band switched to playing backup for the ballsy, bad-ass singer of American blues, the crowd sang along with new energy. It was your basic blues: someone done him wrong, and all he wanted to know was “woman, why you treat me so bad?”

I told Gareth, “And this is my blues!” The song reminded me that American culture is more than fast food and skyscrapers, suburban malls and pre-fabricated housing. It’s the home of jazz and rock, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac, hippy counterculture and hip hop rebellion. Americans don’t just dream. We rebel, we confront, we expect. The world thinks us mad, and maybe we are, but it’s a divine madness. Like the blues, sometimes we’re at our best when we’re being bad.

I am an American. No matter how long or how far I wander, there’s no escaping the influence of the places I come from. Nor would I care to. I may think I have no home, but America is the home that lives within me. Much as I might resist belonging to anything, I do belong to that.

That doesn’t mean I’m ready to go back. I still don’t know when, where, or how to end my long escape. Maybe Dingle knows. This town of mist and music feels alive with portents.

***

Jukka had hiked up to Conair Pass before and he was excited to show us the killer view. So today Janet, Gareth, and I followed him into the hills, hoping the mists would clear.

When we began walking uphill from The Little Bridge, the morning was foggy and wet. My feet throbbed with the memory of months of mountains, stairs, cobblestones, and city streets. But the countryside took my mind off the pain: more of my green Irish fantasy trimmed with tiny flowers, rock fences, and a jolly, rocky stream. All of which Jukka pointed out the entire way: “Isn’t this great . . . This is the stream I told you about . . . Isn’t this scenery fantastic?”

“What scenery?” Janet asked. “I can’t see a damn thing.” As we’d climbed higher, the hills had disappeared in a dense cloud bank, which now rained on us in quiet but steady earnest.

The hill we walked on was a series of spongy, boggy hillocks, and our feet were occasionally sucked ankle-deep into the mud. After we crossed a small waterfall—“Isn’t it wonderful?!” Jukka enthused—we quickly lost the trail.

Two confused hours later, we reached the parking lot at the saddle of the pass. The views Jukka had raved about—Dingle Bay below us to the south, Tralee Bay below us to the north—were completely obscured. I peered down through the heavy white mist until I could make out the faint outlines of some nearby lakes, and said, “I can tell there’s a great view. I just can’t see it.” This prompted gales of laughter all around.

Although there was no view at Conair Pass, there was free, if dangerous, entertainment. I had just sat down atop a steep slope to pull my lunch out of my bum bag when a rock pressed against my back and shoved, nearly knocking me downhill. I turned to see what had pushed me.

It wasn’t a rock, but the horns of the Killer Goat of Conair Pass. The goat clearly intended to send me off the cliff and inherit my lunch. He’s taken up panhandling at the pass after discovering that some tourists have yet to learn you should never feed a strange animal. As I stood up to move away, the goat ran at me and butted me again, harder this time, nearly sending me over the edge. A few feet down the slope stood a small fence, which would have halted my fall but would have mangled me in the process. My companions backed away, laughing.

“Oh my God!” Janet said.

“Oh sure, it’s easy for you to laugh. You haven’t been targeted for”—here I dodged a third butting—“termination!”

We moved away from the slope to eat, each keeping a wary eye on the killer goat. Tourists trickled in by car, and several people approached the goat before we could warn them. One woman walked toward the animal, cooing and reaching out a hand to pet him, when Janet cried, “Look out, he’ll charge you!” This prompted the alarmed woman to turn tail and sprint back to her car. One man stood next to the goat, prepping his camera to take a scenic photo, when the animal swung its head sideways and bashed him in the chest with its impressive horns, nearly goring him. The man retreated to his car, hand pressed to his chest as if it hurt to breathe.

The climax came when a middle-aged German couple showed up in a red, pint-size rental car. The woman rolled down her window and started to feed the goat. Not only did the beast stick his head through the window, horns and all, but he also proceeded to climb halfway into the passenger seat, forelegs in, hind legs out, hooves scrambling in her lap as he tried to launch his entire body into the tiny vehicle. The man and woman both retreated to the driver’s seat, as they tried to shove the animal out of the car. They honked the horn, but this had no effect on the goat. Then the husband tried to be a hero, leaping out of the car and rushing to his wife’s side, where he pushed and prodded the back end of the goat, and finally gave it a swift kick in the rear.

Hint: never kick an animal with horns. The goat did jump back out of the car, all right: it ran at the man, ducked its head, and butted him, hard, horns first, right in the groin. The man yelled and scrambled backward, losing a shoe in the process. Somehow, he escaped emasculation, retrieved his shoe, and jumped back into the car, where he and his wife rolled up the windows and stayed put. They didn’t bother trying to step out to enjoy the view, which, as I’ve explained, couldn’t be seen anyway.

As we started back downhill, the last thing I saw was the goat standing in front of that tiny red compact, pressing its chest against the grill, staring the car down like a bull facing down a matador, as if he dared this pusillanimous red pipsqueak to take him on. Who needs a killer view? Tourists see them every day. But a killer goat? Now we’re talkin’.

Janet said the thing that got to her was the way the goat’s expression never wavered. As she put it, “That blank yellow stare seemed sort of . . . I don’t know . . . evil, somehow.” I wonder if the beast even wanted our food. Maybe he just wanted us to get the hell off his pass.

***

Slender strands of rain and sun string together to make up the days in Dingle. The rainy days are a relief because they expect nothing of me. On those days, I lie in bed late and listen to the rain pattering outside the window. The world’s cares are kept out by Dingle’s green hills and white clouds, making me feel safe, like a child tucked into a magical green and white quilt.

On rainy days, I spend hours wandering from pub to café, café to pub. At some point most days, I settle into the warm embrace of An Café Liteartha, known by locals as the Café Lit. It’s part café, part bookstore. The tiny bookshop out front is filled with Irish literature, while the café in back is filled with wayward tables and locals, expansive conversationalists and intellectual recluses, and always at least two people working on the day’s crossword puzzle.

We’re all waited on by one of the women travelers who’ve come to Dingle for a visit and decided to stay, or by the owner’s son, a good-looking Irish lad who wears his hair in a polite ponytail. The young man is always apologetic when the place is busy and he can’t get to everyone right away, but no one really cares; no one’s in a hurry. Me? I’m just happy to be in this place that smells of books and tea. A pot of hot tea with cream and honey and a fudge biscuit-cake buy me a seat that stops time as I write and read and chat with the locals.

On my first day at the Café Lit, a senior gentleman with a grizzled beard handed me a newspaper article about a local girl who’d scored ridiculously high on her college entrance exam. “She was home-schooled,” he said with an approving nod. “We grow ’em smart in Dingle.” It seems the Irish take deep pride in each other’s achievements. When I browsed through the bookshop out front, the owner informed me that Ireland has turned out more world-renowned writers than many much larger countries. He reminded me of some of their names: James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and several others I’d never heard of, though I nodded and smiled, not wishing to appear illiterate.

The owner is an oldish gent with bushy gray sideburns and long crusts of gray hair emerging from a jaunty tweed hat. Saoirse (Sorshya) is his name—a Gaelic name, so at first I wasn’t sure how to spell it. He speaks Gaelic, too, and, like Irish music, the sound makes my heart ache with a pleasant yearning. He always smiles cheerfully, though his voice is gruff, as if Dingle’s sunny and stormy days have both woven their way into his personality. Each time I tell Saoirse I’m ready to pay my bill, he asks what I ate, then questions me: “Did y’ sit or stand? Did y’ have milk or sugar?” as if he might charge extra for those things.

Like that, with a devilish wink, Dingle’s quiet days end, and its rollicking evenings begin.

***

Whether the days are cloudy or sunny, each night I make my way to the Ballintaggart hostel’s music room. There, a big bay window frames a perfect view of Dingle Bay, a fire often crackles in the grate, and the mood constantly shifts with the people who come and go at all hours.

First, there are the Irish hostel workers: the laughing Irish sisters Eileen and Wendy, and the moody Rory—the Irish Sisters have pinned up a note at the front desk advertising Rory for sale. Next, there’s Joe, the young tour guide from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who looks more like a member of the IRA—he brings a different group through each week. Then, there’s the revolving door of backpackers: Vicki the Scottish siren, the Argentinian man with the didgeridoo, the self-conscious American guy whose name I can’t remember, the pair of smirking Englishmen whose names I don’t care to remember, and an ever-changing cast of characters. By midnight, the music room is usually full with a dozen to two dozen people.

One early evening, I was sitting by the window, half-writing and half-listening to the conversations that wandered in and out. The Irish Sisters were sitting on one of the couches chattering. The American whose name I can’t remember walked in, wearing his usual painstaking smile, and shrugged himself into a corner of the second couch. He kept working his mouth like a beached fish, as if he were about to say something to the Sisters. He seems never able to decide whether to jump into a conversation or press himself into the woodwork, always ending up in the uncomfortable middle.

The two Englishmen whose names I don’t care to remember walked in next and made a noisy, intoxicated production of sitting down in the murmuring room. The noisier of the two, with thick dark brow and storm cloud eyes, dramatically flung himself into a chair, while the quieter, fairer of the two flopped onto the second couch, prompting the Nameless American to shrink further into his corner. The Englishmen were in mid-conversation, and the noisy one was saying something about having “offended again.” Then he announced loudly to the rest of us, “But I don’t believe in all this being polite. I’d rather be honest.”

I looked up from my journal and smiled. “I believe it’s possible to be both.”

“That’s ri—” Wendy began to agree from the couch.

Her voice was drowned out with Mr. Honesty’s reply of, “Oh, ballocks to that!”

This prompted a discussion of the difference between honesty and rudeness. The debate featured Mr. Honesty and his friend versus the Irish Sisters, whose feminine attention the men had surely hoped to rouse in the first place. Having quickly read the danger signs—namely, the nearly empty bottle of wine Mr. Honesty had placed between his knees—I lowered my head and resumed writing. The Nameless American tried to interject with trite one-liners like, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” which drew guffaws from Mr. Honesty. The Nameless American stood up, declared, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be boring,” and left. The Irish Sisters left a moment later, waving to me in sympathy.

“Well, we certainly cleared the room in a hurry,” Mr. Honesty said to his less talkative but equally sneering friend. His tone, and his friend’s snort of laughter, indicated they were quite proud of this achievement.

Then, in walked Joe, the tour guide from Belfast who looks more like an IRA guerilla: thin and proudly slouching, with angry dark stubble poking through his shaved head. A member of his tour group followed, a young American with a boy-next-door face. They sat at a far table, intent on some deep discussion. Mr. Honesty interrupted them several times, trying to muscle into the conversation, but they barely glanced at him. Mr. H managed to squeeze out of Joe a confirmation that he was, indeed, from Northern Ireland, but when Mr. H asked whether Joe was Catholic or Protestant, Joe said he didn’t want to talk about it.

“So you’re Catholic then,” Mr. H concluded. Joe refused to respond. Undeterred, Mr. H blurted, “So, do you know anyone personally who’s been killed?”

My heart skipped a beat. Not metaphorically—I actually felt it. I kept my head down, but my pen stopped moving as I listened.

With an infuriated sigh, Joe addressed Mr. H, “That’s my business and I don’t have to tell anybody! But just think about what you’re asking.” He paused. “There are some things a person should be able to keep to himself.”

“All right. That’s fair. Fair enough. That’s . . . that’s very fair,” said Mr. H, abashed for the first time since he’d walked in. After an awkward interval, he then tried to draw me out, “So, where are you from?”

I dragged my head upward and answered, “The States.”

“Really? But you don’t look American . . . ” He studied my face so insinuatingly that I felt molested. “You have a different coloring . . . darker . . . like you might be Latin maybe, or . . . ”

I replied with scorn, “I’m part Mexican.”

“That’s it!” he said.

Then I added, speaking slowly and underlining each word with sarcasm, “Yes . . . We have black people, too.” I was startled by Joe’s roar of laughter behind me.

Mr. H dropped his shoulders and said, “All right, all right, I get it. I’m sorry.”

I replied with a silent smile of forgiveness but said nothing. Joe left the room.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” Mr. H said to The Boy Next Door, “but how am I supposed to learn anything about other people if I don’t ask questions?”

“You could try visiting the places those people come from,” the Boy Next Door said.

“Visit Northern Ireland. Are you mad?”

“No. Really, you should go sometime. It opened my eyes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve always lived in a country that’s been at peace. I’d never been in a country before while it was at war, and . . . that’s all I’m going to say. You should just go.”

Mr. H’s silent partner finally piped up, “Go to a war-torn country just for the educational experience? Not bloody likely! I like to learn and all that, but I don’t have a death wish.”

“Me either.” Mr. H took a swig from his bottle of wine, stared at the bottle thoughtfully, and said, “Although I may drink myself to death.”

“A fuck of a lot better than getting blown up,” his friend suggested.

“I’ll drink to that,” Mr. H said. He raised his bottle, his friend raised his plastic cup, and they both took a swig.

The Boy Next Door shrugged in surrender to the pointlessness of a conversation with two pissed troglodytes, sat at my table, and talked to me instead. He told me about his tour of Europe, which is coming to an end so he can start college next week. I asked what he plans to study. He said the world was so full of possibilities he had no idea how he was ever going to pick a major. I asked what possibilities he was passionate about. Everything: travel, history, social anthropology, environmentalism, film, art, writing.

He gushed about his dream of becoming the next Ernest Hemingway. “He’s why today anyone can pick up a book and just read it, because he wrote so simply.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“John.”

“John what?”

“Turner.”

“So instead of trying to be the next Ernest Hemingway, why not try to be the first John Turner? I mean, lean, straightforward prose is a great thing to strive for. But Hemingway became a great writer by being unique.”

“Right. Of course,” he said, nodding, receptive to my hackneyed advice.

Thus encouraged, for the next hour John Turner poured out his fascination with the world, until the light outside faded. Then someone lit a fire in the fireplace, the room slowly filled with people, and John and I fell silent as we wrote in our journals.

I again felt compelled to put down my pen when Vicki the wine-soaked Scottish siren made her grand entrance. A young woman with luminous hazel eyes, bright auburn hair, and a curvaceous figure, Vicki is clearly used to commanding attention, male or female, with her witty, seductive allure. She started telling Wendy, and everyone else in earshot, about a hosteller she was hiding from, whose excessive attention made her feel stalked. Though I didn’t ask, I knew she was talking about the Nameless American. She explained, “I figured out why he makes me so nerrrvous. It’s because he’s sooshly eenept. (The term “socially inept” sounded reinvented in her thick Scottish accent.) But it’s hard to get awee from ’im, because I feel so sorrry for ’im.”

It wasn’t just Vicki’s own drama that interested her. When she caught sight of my journal she laughed with delight, “All you Americans are alwees carrying journals. Bring that over here.” She patted the couch next to her. “I want to see what you people write in those things.”

Laughing, I said, “I’m not showing you my journal. It’s full of my private thoughts.”

“That’s exactly why I want to rrread it. You’re spoilin’ the fun.” When I wouldn’t give in to her wheedling, she asked, “Did ye’ write anything in there about the ghost of Ballintaggart?”

“This place is haunted?” asked Janet, her eyes shining. Janet had been talking to someone else, but Vicki’s strong personality has its own gravitational pull. A couple of other women also leaned forward.

Surrounded by an audience, Vicki was in her element. Lifting an eyebrow and slowly scanning our faces, she dramatically pointed at a portrait on the mantel, a painting of a young woman with strawberry blond hair piled on her head, wearing what appeared to be a nineteenth century dress. “That’s Lady Ventry, the ghost of Ballintaggart,” she whispered, as if not wanting the ghost to hear. She told the tale in a husky murmur while light from the fireplace danced across our faces, turning us into the picture of young girls telling ghost stories around a campfire. Long ago, the English Lord Ventry owned most of the land on the Dingle Peninsula. According to Vicki, Lord and Lady Ventry were staying at Ballintaggart Manor “when it happened . . .

“Her husband thought she was fooolin’ around with a servant. He was very jealous. So he hired someone to kill ’errr. The killer thrrrottled her and threw ’er down the stairrrs!” She said the murder took place, at least as far as the throttling went, in Room F. “And sooometimes,” she paused for effect, “people still hear ’er walking around that rrroom, or see ’er at the window looking ooot. Some people have even heard ’er getting thrrrown down the stairrrs.”

I’m staying in Room D, where, so far, I haven’t heard any ghosts, just creaking floorboards. “But,” I said, “if I were going to see spirits, I’m sure it would be here in Dingle. I can’t explain it, but it’s like this town talks to me on some deep ancestral level.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Vicki said. “This town has put you under a spell: you’ve been Dingled!”

It’s not any one thing that casts the Dingle spell, but if I were to blame just one thing, it would be the music—in the pubs, in the streets, and at Ballintaggart. Each night in the music room, two or three guitars appear. Often there are drums. Sometimes there are harmonicas or other instruments.

That night, Gareth was the first to bring in his guitar. After he plucked a few folk tunes, I overheard him tell someone that he used to give guitar lessons to prisoners. He declined to elaborate. Although he’s a serious man, he’s not a brooding one, and he didn’t just play for himself; mostly he played requests, so other people could sing along.

Gareth’s inner schoolboy came out when he discovered he could drive the Irish Sisters up the wall by playing “More than Words,” the popular ballad by Extreme. He’s taken to poking out his tongue and playing that song every time the Sisters walk into the room, knowing full well he’ll never get through the first verse before they start throwing things at him, punching his arms, and shrieking protests until they drown him out: “Stop, stop . . . you’re killin’ us! Every bloke with a guitar who passes through Dingle plays that shite song!”

Eileen, the bolder sister, strummed tunes by Sarah McLaughlin and Jewel. Rory played traditional Irish ballads and songs from slightly more recent Irish artists like Van Morrison and Crowded House. All three played folk, rock, and blues: Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Tracy Chapman . . .

Under the spell of music, hours melted like Salvador Dali clocks. Wine spilled on the rug and cigarette smoke hung in the air. The smoke would have driven me out of any other room, but here it seemed necessary, part of a ritual intended to transport us on a collective vision quest. The mood shifted as the room filled with nothing but the primitive sounds of two hand-drums and a didgeridoo, rivaling the story of Lady Ventry for thrilling spookiness. I got so lost in the mantra of the drums that I disappeared. I might have been sitting there for minutes, hours, or days.

I felt high. If I’d ever taken a drug that made me feel that way, I would have become an addict long ago. Was this why they seemed to vanish before my eyes, all those addicts I’ve loved? Was this the elusive escape they kept chasing, but never seemed to find?

I stayed until I could no longer hold my eyes open.

After I crawled into bed, I heard John (The Boy Next Door) and another young guy enter the co-ed dorm. They went into the bathroom, whispering about how great Ballintaggart is. I heard John say, “Did you meet that Cara? She was really cool.” Smiling in the darkness, I wondered what made him think I was “cool.” Looking back on the evening, I realized I hadn’t said much. I’d mostly asked questions, watched, and listened. I hadn’t been trying to get people to like me; if I had, I would more likely have talked up a storm. The simple wisdom this implied was nothing new, but it was a new way for me to experience myself.

I drifted off to sleep filled with wonder, as I have been ever since. For the first time in my life, if I could change anything about myself, I wouldn’t. I want to hold onto this feeling. I don’t want to let go of this place.

***

I’ve asked Saoirse for a job at his little café that smells of books and tea. I’ve decided to try to stay in Dingle for the winter.

So what about Sean?

What about Sean? After I replied to his email, “Marry me, soon,” with my answer, “Okay, when?” I received no response. In Spain, I emailed my reply again, just in case he didn’t receive the first one: “Okay, when?” No response again. In France, I sent the same two words: “Okay, when?” Here in Dingle, I checked my email at the town library. Still no reply.

I have no fiancé. I have no home. No job waits for me in the States. Although my flight from London to New York is in eleven days, I’ve never planned on New York as my final destination. I’ve always planned to decide that later. Later is almost here, and I still have no idea where to go. How can I go home when I don’t have one?

As Vicki said, I’ve been Dingled. So for now, I’ve decided to stay under this town’s spell, if I can. But I’m running out of cash, which means I’ll need a job.

When I asked Saoirse if he’d hire me, he gave me a measuring look and pulled on his chin. He asked about my experience. I told him I spent several years as a waitress in college.

“We’d expect y’ to do some of the bakin’ and the food preparation. Do y’ have kitchen experience?”

“Well, I’ve never baked for a restaurant . . . but I’m a pretty good baker at home when I put my mind to it . . . and I’m a fast learner.” God, I must have sounded pathetic.

He told me he’d think about it.

This evening I told Janet and Gareth about my plan. (Jukka left a few days ago.)

Janet said, “Sounds like that’s the end of your guy back home.”

“Not necessarily. I’m just not going to plan a life with him until he asks me to.” I shook my head. “You know, this whole trip I’ve been asking God to show me the purpose of my life. I don’t know the whole answer yet, but I’ve discovered one thing: The purpose of my life is not to get what I want. The purpose of my life is to become who I am.”

Gareth looked skeptical. “You’re telling me you’d be happy even if you never got anything you wanted?”

“I’m telling you I’ll never be happy if getting what I want means giving up who I am.” I’ve spent a lot of my life talking, usually about myself, but, for the first time, I listened to myself as if I might have something useful to say. “That’s what this journey is all about. It’s not about finding something, it’s about becoming something.”

Janet stared at me with fierce concentration as if I were a Rubik’s Cube and my words were a disordered jumble of colors. “That’s what your journey around the world is about?”

“Not just that journey. My life. How I live it. Me. When I die, that’s all I’ll have to show for everything: just me.”

“I agree with all that,” Gareth said. “But as for your feller, I have to say, I’m with Janet. You don’t really expect him to wait for you, do you?”

“You don’t understand. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m the one who’s waiting.”

The Last Frontier

thirty-five years old

Last year, Sean was the one waiting. But it wasn’t me he was waiting for. His whole family was waiting, for life to either get better or unravel.

Sean’s dad, Stuart, was an entrepreneur and, in the way of the Alaskan frontiersman, his dreams became subject to boom and bust. When the oil boom came, his little jewelry shop had its own boom. When the oil bust followed, the shop continued to thrive as more expensive stores left town. Then the retail boom came, filling the city with big boxy superstores and little discount outlets. Stu’s neighborhood store just wasn’t a convenient place to shop anymore. The business started to tailspin, and so did Sean’s dad.

The first sign of Stu’s decline was his greenhouse. He used to grow gorgeous red tomatoes. He once gave me a few to take home. He was so proud, I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t like tomatoes. But last year he let the tomato plants go, along with the other fruits and vegetables, and the flowers that used to cheer him in winter.

Stu had given up drinking years before. I remember he once pulled Sean and me aside and drew something out of his pocket to show us. It was a gift from a fellow member of Alcoholics Anonymous: a coin emblazoned with the number thirty. “Thirty years of sobriety,” he confided. Then he gave us an impish grin. “And it only took thirty pounds of marijuana to get through it.” Last year, instead of planting tomatoes in the greenhouse, Stu grew pot.

As Stu spent more time getting high, he spent more time sleeping upstairs in his recliner. He left the running of the shop to Sean’s sister. Sean’s mom, Tess, set her mouth in that funny little line that was her way of tolerating her husband’s foolishness without stooping to approval.

Tess’s mother lived with them. Grandma Mae was a tough, broad-shouldered old gal from Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains. She held onto the no-nonsense attitude of the Great Depression—and anything else she could still use. Forced to slow down by poor health, she spent her days in the matching recliner across from Stu’s, knitting dishcloths. She’d knitted me a set the previous Christmas, and everyone had stared in surprise as she accepted a hug from me without fuss, chuckled, and patted my arm—an uncommon honor. The only thing she knitted last year were disapproving brows, aimed at her son-in-law. “You should get off your rear and stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said. In response, he got off his recliner and went to bed.

He stayed there for months.

That Christmas, Sean and I spent as little time as possible at his family’s house. On Christmas Eve, he escaped to my place and watched me decorate a tree. I asked him to help me.

“I’m just not into the tree decorating thing,” he replied. “But you’re doing a great job.”

“What are you into?” I asked. He rarely wanted to go skiing any more, or to the movies, or to the dojo, or anywhere. I looked at Sean sitting listless on my couch staring out at the snow and pictured his dad sitting on his recliner staring into space.

He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry you got stuck with such a Scrooge. What you need is someone more cheerful than me, someone who’ll do things with you.”

“I hate when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Tell me I need someone different from you. Why don’t you be that guy, instead of trying to pass me off on someone else? Or why don’t you just tell me you don’t want to be with me? Why doesn’t anybody ever want to take responsibility?”

Although the days grew longer, Sean’s winter blues held onto internal night. His sense of humor remained, but it was dark humor. He made fun of himself for being over-thirty and living at home.

I argued against his self-indictment. “But you live in your own apartment. You pay rent.”

“Cara, my parents live upstairs, I live downstairs. I pay rent, but it’s ridiculously cheap. I live at home.”

“Okay. But it’s not as if you’re a mama’s boy. You’re very independent.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. I mean, my dad expects me to take over the business, but I don’t want to. I hate it. I mean I like making jewelry, but I never wanted to run a business.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yes. Then you know what he told his friends? He said, ‘I spent twenty years building this business, thinking my kids would take over and take care of me in my old age.’ Now the business is going bankrupt, and he feels like he’s failed us . . . or we’ve failed him.”

“Your father has no right to expect you to fulfill his dream. It’s not going to help him if you go down with the ship. This is your life, not his.”

“You do know, whatever I do, I’ll probably move to the Lower Forty-eight?”

“Yes . . . ”

“So what happens to us then, you and me?” he asked.

“I don’t know. What happens to us then?”

“You know I’m not interested in marriage.”

“Why not?”

“Cara, I’ve never been able to sustain a relationship long-term. I can’t promise to love someone forever. I don’t even believe love exists.”

“Doesn’t exist? Come on! That kind of thinking has to be some kind of sickness.”

“Maybe it is. All the more reason for me not to get married. Why do you want to hang around with an alcoholic, anyway?”

“Because I do believe love exists.”

“I think that is a sickness.”

One bitter night, a bonsai tree that belonged to Sean’s dad appeared on their front stoop. The diminutive tree was dying, tiny inches of brown and drying twigs jutting this way and that. Anchorage was covered in frost, but when I found the bonsai it appeared untouched.

I carried it inside and asked Sean, “Do you think we could save it?”

“No. Once a bonsai tree starts to go there’s little you can do.”

I carried the tiny tree back outside and set it on the porch. I paused there a moment, took a deep breath of the chilled night air and let it out in small bursts like the chugging of a train, the way I used to when I was a girl, and watched the small, cottony puffs float away in the dark.

***

By spring, Sean and I barely saw each other anymore. I resigned myself to the idea that for many people life doesn’t hold happy endings, only happy beginnings followed by reality.

Then came more reality. I wasn’t there when it happened, but Sean called to tell me. One morning, his mother came downstairs from the house to the jewelry shop and stood mute in the doorway, wearing a worried frown, her mouth working as if she were trying to figure out what to say.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Sean asked.

“Grandma’s not breathing,” Tess said in a wispy voice.

Someone shouted, “Call 911!” and everyone ran upstairs to Grandma Mae’s room.

Sean told me, “I shook Grandma and started yelling. There was all this commotion, and they wanted me to do CPR, and the woman on the phone was talking us through it, and she asked, ‘Does she have false teeth?’ She said someone needed to get the teeth out of her mouth. And I was reaching in Grandma’s mouth to get her teeth . . . and it was just so, I hate to say it, but it was disgusting. None of us knew how long she’d been dead and I was about to do mouth-to-mouth, and all I could think was I didn’t want to be there.”

Just as he yanked her dentures out, the paramedics showed up. Tess, who had been standing riveted, shouted, “Stop! My mother didn’t want any life-saving measures. She has a living will!” She disappeared down the hall and ran back with the living will in her hand. The chaos stopped and the murmuring began as everyone allowed death its place in the room.

That’s when Sean decided it was time to leave home. A part of him had floated outside the scene and watched, and he could no longer deny what he’d seen: a house where financial demise, depression, and now death had run everyone down like a steamroller, flattening them like two-dimensional cartoons, floating down, down, down like paper. He knew his father was next, and he didn’t want to follow. He asked me to edit his resume. Time was running out.

A few days after Grandma Mae’s death, Sean’s dad swung from depression to mania. He pulled out scissors, glue, and construction paper and began making a collage, a project that overran his entire living room. Too late did his wife realize he was also cutting up all their old family photos to create his dubious work of art. One day, the police called Tess to tell her that Stuart had gone to a thrift store, filled a shopping cart with odds and ends, and marched the cart outside without paying. It wasn’t clear whether he’d turned into a kleptomaniac or his mind had drifted so far away he’d forgotten what he was doing. After that, he died his hair gold—not blond or yellow, but gold—and showed it off to everyone, cackling with delight at the color.

For Tess, the last straw was when he began inviting strangers to stay at the house, people who smelled of homelessness, booze, and wasted lives. He said that, as an A.A. member, he was just trying to help. Unable to coax him into sensible conversation or therapy, fearful of his odd house-guests who came and went at all hours, Tess left the house and moved in with her daughter.

Sean began spending more time at my place, hiding. But he couldn’t avoid going home at least five days a week, because that was where he worked, at least until he found another job.

While he sent out resumes, I continued to save money for my global trek. Then my dad’s wife fell into a coma. I didn’t know that this family emergency—with its last-minute flights, unpaid leave, car rental, and expenses—would eat half the cost of a shoestring trip around the world. I thought I’d have to delay my dream. Then my grandmother mailed me the missing half as a gift.

“Mom, you need this money for retirement. I can’t accept it.”

“Yes you can. I have a good pension. I want to do this for you, while I’m still alive. I never had a dream. So your dream will be my dream, and you’ll come back and tell me about it.”

With that, the fulfillment of my goal required only the decision to go. I considered the possibility that this fantasy might save not just me, but Sean and me. I asked him to come with me. But he was afraid to spend his savings when his future was so uncertain.

“You can always get a job when you come back. Come on! Instead of sitting around here watching the business tank, you can have an adventure you’ll remember the rest of your life!”

“I’m sorry, Cara, I know you want someone to come with you.”

“Not ‘someone.’ You.”

“But it can’t be me. It’s just not realistic.”

In July, he found a job in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. I began to hope that, if he wouldn’t come with me, he’d at least ask me to go with him. “A lady waits to be asked,” Mom once told me. I’ve never been good at waiting, but this time it seemed the right thing to do. Unless I let him ask me, how would I know if he truly wanted me? The question never came.

One day while he packed, I stood in the midst of a dozen boxes, surveying the disorder, motionless and pensive, until he stopped wrapping glasses in newspaper and stared at me, chewing his lower lip.

“So,” I said, “you really aren’t going to ask me to come with you?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to. Besides, I couldn’t do that to you. Farmington’s a small town—there’s no TV station, so what would you do? I won’t be making enough to support us . . . I’m sorry, I can tell by the way you’re looking at me that I’m screwing this up. Did you want to come?”

“What does it matter what I wanted? After that speech, I don’t want it now. I don’t want to be with someone who can’t even be bothered to ask me to be with him.”

“So it’s over?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I don’t want it to be over.”

“So it’s not over. But it will be, when you fly south.”

“Right,” he said. Then he shrugged and looked away, biting on his thumbnail. I hated when he did that. It made an ugly clicking sound. Turning back to look at me, he caught me staring at his thumb, and lowered it slowly. It was only the end of a relationship, but in the Last Frontier, if you squint long enough in the wrong direction, you can see the end of everything. And neither of us wanted to look anymore.

I’ve Been Dingled

thirty-six years old—dingle, ireland

I thought I left it behind in Alaska, but today in Ireland I once again visited the end of the earth. Sunshine transformed the Dingle Peninsula into the bright bliss of heaven as I biked around the Slea Head Loop. It took me to the westernmost point of Europe: the water-carved cliffs where the culminating energy of the Atlantic first crashes into land.

I locked my rental bike to a pasture gate and walked up a grassy slope, passing several sheep along the way. I soon found myself sinking and rising, wading through uneven grass up to my knees. As I approached the summit, the slope grew so steep I could crawl upward on hands and feet while remaining upright. At the top I looked north, where a crescent of jagged coastline curved into the distance toward Slea Head and the Blasket Islands. The ocean was a mad beauty, a blaze of furious white froth pounding the cliffs.

I arrived at a wreck of a wooden shack with gaping holes punched into its surviving walls and floors. Two couples were there, English by their accents. I maintained a discreet distance, and felt glad when they left. I not only wanted solitude, I craved a cold blast of loneliness.

I followed a narrow path along the cliff ledge, little wider than a footstep. The height was dizzying. I couldn’t help but consider what it might be like to trip and fall off. There’d be a long time to think on the way down. I stopped to peer down a crevice that opened onto a view of the traveling sea and manic waves hundreds of feet below. The distant thunder of the ocean was soothing, though it vibrated the ground where I stood. I don’t know why such terrifying power gives me peace. I suppose it’s freeing to be reminded how little control we have over anything.

As I gazed, dreamy eyed, into the memory of all the waters I have met, I once again asked God to show me the purpose of my life and help me fulfill it. And, as I listened to the ocean’s ferocious lullaby, I began to hear an answer. Since long before my odyssey began, to this moment staring at the place the ancients once thought of as the edge of the earth and the beginning of the unknown, only one desire has remained constant: my desire to be heard.

It is a compulsion so strong that it has driven the people I love to distraction: “I think part of the reason Grampa left was because of you. Because he couldn’t stand all your arguing.” . . . “When you keep going on and on like that, it makes me think about guns . . . and knives.” . . . “I have to listen to you talk and talk, until you say everything you want to say. And if I don’t, it’s ‘let me finish!’” Throughout my life, the thing I’ve wanted most was to tell someone all I’ve seen and heard and felt. This has always been my curse. But now I understand: it is also my purpose.

Like the tide, to fulfill my purpose I need only flow in the direction that draws me onward. Like a wave, I’ll glide along the paths of least resistance, jump over obstacles, and wear down walls. Like the surf, I’ll whisper in the distance, and if someone draws close enough to listen, I’ll roar. The ocean has a story to tell. And so do I.

***

I spent all day at the Café Lit, drinking tea and eating apple crumble with clotted cream, reading and writing and chatting with the regulars, but mostly waiting for Saoirse. It was closing time when he walked in, and I approached him to pay my bill and ask one more time for a job.

When I told him what I’d eaten, as usual he questioned me: “Did y’ sit or stand? Did y’ have sugar? Milk?”

Then I asked, “Have you given any more thought to whether you could use my help around here?”

He once again stood with his finger on his chin, thinking. He walked over to his son, and they whispered together. Then he walked back over to me, looked me up and down one more time, and said with his usual gruff warmth, “Come back tomorrow at nine.”

Stunned at this unexpected success, I asked, “Come back to talk?”

“No, to work!” he said with a crooked smile.

“Oh . . . okay,” I replied, hesitant but grinning from ear-to-ear.

“Can you?” he asked.

“Ye-e-e-s . . . Yes, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I tripped over myself as I left.

“I have a job!” I spoke out loud as I walked down the street. “Oh my God! I have a job! I’m going to live in Ireland!” Then, as it sank in, “Fuck . . . I have a job . . . I’m going to live in Ireland?”

The Ballintaggart van was sitting at the bus stop, full of people, and I ran for it, grinning with elation and terror. I bounced onto a seat next to Gareth, turned to him and said, “I got a job!” A few people congratulated me, and someone slapped me on the shoulder.

“That’s great!” Gareth said, but his eyes searched my face with concern. Although I was grinning, he must have noticed my eyes bulging with shock, because as we drove away he murmured, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah . . . I just can’t believe it. Now I have to find a place to live.” I’m sure I said more, but I can’t remember what. My lips were talking about the job and living in Dingle, but I was thinking about my sister, Iliana, who just turned three a few days ago. I’d called to wish her a happy birthday. She’d told me that she’d had a piñata at her party. She’d learned so many new words. She’d asked if I could come play with her; she had no concept of a world so enormous that it might not be possible for me to come over tomorrow. I was thinking about all the drinkers I’ve met in Dingle. I went through nine winters surrounded by depressed, seasonal affective disordered, cabin-fevered alcoholics in Alaska. Do I want to do that again? I was thinking about Sean. But I no longer knew what I thought about Sean.

The peace I’ve felt in Dingle has vanished.

***

A person may give away all worldly possessions, don sandals and robe, and wander the planet, becoming in the process either a sage or a fool. I suspect it may be hard to tell the difference. When I go home, wherever that is, I suppose some people will expect wisdom from me, but it’s likely most people will find me more foolish now than I was before I set out.

I wouldn’t try to change their minds.

This morning I woke up early to start my new job. I was nervous about making pastries.

I still missed my sister, but I reminded myself that my father got married a few weeks ago to a woman with two daughters of her own. They’re Iliana’s family now; I’m simply the big sister who doesn’t live at home. So there’s no need to hurry back. I still missed Sean, but I reminded myself that he never exactly proposed. Again, no need to hurry back.

Before I set out for the Café Lit, I went to the hostel’s payphone and called Sean.

“Hi-i-i-i!” he said in the sweet tone men only use with children or women they love.

“Guess what?” I said. My pulse leapt in my neck.

“What?”

“I got a job. I start this morning.”

“Wow . . . ” he said. “I thought something like that might happen. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s not a good-paying job, but it’s at this cute little café at the back of a bookshop where they sell Irish books. The owner speaks Gaelic. I mean, it’s a great place . . . ”

“It sounds great.”

“But I don’t know how I feel about it. I think it’ll only pay about four Irish pounds an hour. And I wouldn’t be able to see you for a long time . . . ” He didn’t step in to help me, so I spit out my next question, “AndIwanttoknowwhatyouthinkaboutit.”

“Ca-ra . . . ” he sighed, “I’m not going to do that.”

“I’m not asking you to make my decision for me. But if you meant anything you’ve said, you definitely have an interest in it. And I have a legitimate interest in knowing your feelings, since this decision will affect our relationship. I was thinking about it all last night and I just couldn’t come to peace with my decision. Then I realized that’s because I want to go home. The problem is, I don’t know what I’m going home to, or where to go home to.” He said nothing, so I continued, “Two months ago you sent me an email that said ‘Marry me, soon,’ and I sent you three replies. But you never responded. I started to think maybe you didn’t mean it.”

“No. I meant it. But see, you’ve been doing all this traveling, and I keep thinking you’re going to come to tiny little Farmington, New Mexico after seeing all these exciting places, and it’s going to seem boring. I don’t think you’ll be happy here. I’m not even that happy here.”

“Sean, if we don’t like Farmington we can always move. All I know is, wherever I go, I’d be much happier living with you than traveling alone for the rest of my life.”

“That’s the other problem. I want to propose properly and do the romantic thing,” the words caught in his throat, “but I can’t do it while you’re halfway around the world.”

“So you’re just waiting for me to come home before you propose?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, with the characteristic sincerity I’ve learned to rely on.

“Okay. I’ll come home.”

We quickly declared our love, then I had to run to make it to the café on time. Even if I wasn’t going to take the job, I owed it to Saoirse to tell him. As I hurried past the front desk, Wendy flashed a broad smile, revealing a crooked front tooth. “Going to your new job, then?”

“No, I’m only going there to tell Saoirse I can’t work for him. I’m going home to get married!”

I just had time to register her gaping surprise, as she said, “That’s the best news! Congratulations!”

“Thanks!” I shouted over my shoulder as I rushed out the door into the sunshine.

I ran almost the entire way to town, stuck on the idea that I had to show up on time. As I ran, I thought, “Now I can go home, because I know where home is: it’s wherever Sean is, and he’s not in Dingle.”

When I arrived at the Café Lit, sweaty and out of breath, the door was locked. I knocked for several minutes before someone answered. It was Marcella, a young Spanish woman who just started working at the café last week. Saoirse wasn’t in yet, but I told Marcella I couldn’t take the job after all. She frowned but remained polite, saying, “This is too bad. Another woman was going to work today, but Saoirse gave her the day off because he was expecting you.” I was surprised they planned to rely on me so heavily on my first day. Under the circumstances, I felt too ashamed to leave. So I told Marcella I’d stay for the day, for as long as she needed help.

With a sigh, she let me in. She showed me how to start the coffee, then took me upstairs to the kitchen to help her prepare the day’s fare. Marcella was apparently born in a kitchen, and her sidelong glances made it clear I was hopeless.

She instructed me to cut vegetables for the sandwiches and slice apples for the pastry. This sounded simple enough, but when I put onions and carrots into the automatic slicer I used the wrong attachment, cutting thick slices instead of julienne strips. Marcella laughed and said we’d use them anyway. Then I squished a tomato because I didn’t know how to use the tomato slicer. Now, it really wasn’t my fault that it took me five minutes to peel a single apple; when a condescending Marcella attempted to show me how to use the peeler, she admitted it was dull.

The main problem was that I was still shaking in reaction to my second near-proposal in two months.

I was still destroying the apples when Saoirse and his son walked in. Saoirse looked gruff and cheery as usual. “Good morning!” he said.

“Good morning,” I said, with a guilty smile—I liked him very much and I knew turning down a job I’d begged for wasn’t likely to earn his respect—“I need to talk to you.”

In the half-laughing, half-exasperated tone of someone who’s been through this conversation at least a dozen times, he said, “No! I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear it!”

Relieved that he was going to have a sense of humor about this, I rushed on, “I’m sorry. I called home this morning . . . ”

“Oh no! Don’t be doin’ that. You should never call home.” A twinkle lit his stern eyes.

“And I got another offer . . . ” I continued.

“Ohhh no,” he interrupted again, obviously enjoying the suspense.

“I’m getting married!” I said, beaming.

“Aw, that’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard,” he said with good-humored disgust.

“No, it’s true.” I turned to Marcella, hoping for forgiveness. “Now, wouldn’t you say that’s a better offer?”

She only smiled, looking simultaneously pleased and disapproving.

“Well now, it might be a better offer and it might not be,” Saoirse said. “It depends on who’s making the offer.”

“I promise I’ll come back to Dingle someday with my fiancé so you can meet him.”

“If you come back with him, he better be your husband, not your fiancé, or we’ll know it wasn’t a very good offer.”

“I’m really sorry about inconveniencing you.”

“Will you marry me, then?”

“Sorry, you’ll have to get up earlier. I’ve already accepted the first proposal of the day.”

Although I told Saoirse I’d stay for the day, Marcella and Saoirse’s son politely suggested I might as well leave. I had a feeling they were relieved to be free of my dubious assistance—although I will say, at least I didn’t ruin the scone mix. I thanked them for their understanding. Saoirse’s son shrugged.

“Thank you. Most people who change their minds don’t offer to help. Don’t worry about it. It happens. And congratulations on getting married.”

Those last words scared me. The idea hardly seemed real. But tonight my spirit is filled with the stillness that comes with a right decision.

Even if New Mexico isn’t the right choice, this evening at Ballintaggart I saw the final sign that it’s at least time to finish my journey. That sign was Jerry from the States. Jerry’s been working in the kitchen of a local restaurant during the tourist season, but this evening he told me the restaurant is letting him go and he’s having trouble finding a new job. Jerry is forty-five, but he looks fifty-five. Although his face, clothes, and hair have the rumpled look of all backpackers, on him the look doesn’t communicate adventure, only a consummate weariness. He looks homeless. Maybe that’s because he is. If I had any doubt about my decision, Jerry cured it. I pictured myself at forty-five, working in kitchens and hanging out with people half my age. It was an equally weary sight.

I’ll miss Dingle’s friendly people, spirited music, and numinous beauty. But I won’t miss spending a long, cold winter working a low-wage job. I won’t miss hitting the pubs each night amid people killing the blues with pints of ale. I won’t miss sleeping in a lonely bed in a cheap room. I can always find friendly people, beautiful scenery, and lively music whenever I want, wherever I go, because I’ve swung the door to my life wide open, and there’s no shutting it now.

People have always passed in and out of my life without my knowing why. This year they’ve left so many marks on me, my soul must look like Lydia the Tattooed Lady. Tomorrow I’ll leave Ballintaggart behind, but the people I’ve met will come with me. An inky outline of their laughing, singing, open faces will remain indelible on the skin of my psyche.

Tonight in the music room, Gareth asked, “So, did you talk to your feller?”

“Yes.”

“And did the conversation go all right?”

“It went better than all right. I’m going home.”

“Good for you,” he said with a firm nod. “Then it was probably all a good thing. It probably brought things to a head.”

As news of my engagement spread through the hostel, I received congratulations all around, and requests for my story. The Irish Sisters sighed and pronounced it perfectly romantic: “It’s just the best news!” Jerry the Cook listened with the skepticism of someone for whom wandering the world has changed from adventure to fruitless search to resigned transience. He blew a cynical raspberry, “Sorry, I don’t believe in romance.”

Gareth laughed, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just funny,” he said. “One moment you’re on the phone accepting this marriage proposal, and the next you’re in the kitchen at this café chopping vegetables.”

“And not chopping them very well, either,” I said. “My grandma always told me if I didn’t learn to cook no one would ever marry me.”

“What a crrruel thing to say!” Vicki said, though I’d been aiming for a laugh.

“Anyway, you were right, Vicki: I was Dingled. And it took a prince to break the spell.”

Soon the music started and there was no more need to talk. As music washed over me, I thought about my journey. From Anchorage to L.A., from China to Ireland, I’ve come farther in the past year than in my entire life before. I’ve traveled more than 25,000 miles, according to maps. Off the map, no lines of longitude or latitude can measure how far I’ve come. I still have a long way to go, to the Four Corners, where New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah meet. I don’t feel as if I’m going home. Rather, I’m going to yet another place where I’ll be a stranger in a strange land. For me, it has always been this way. That’s one of the reasons I considered staying away from the United States: in foreign countries it at least makes sense to feel strange and out of place.

But, although I doubt I’ll ever feel completely comfortable anywhere, I no longer mind feeling uncomfortable. Why do we value one emotion over another? On this journey, in my deepest moments of loneliness and sorrow I’ve found profound beauty, as satisfying and healing as my greatest moments of love and joy. I’ve spent too much time as a worshipper in the American Cult of Happiness. That’s only led me to an inauthentic life.

Although he may have broken the Dingle spell, the truth is Sean has yet to propose. Not to worry. Sean is not the only one I love. As my heart beats in rhythm with the drums of Ballintaggart, and my journey floats through me like smoke, I remember falling in love with someone else I met along the road. Myself.