Croagh Patrick
by Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D.

Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D. is Core Faculty, Mythological Studies, Pacifica Graduate Institute. The author of over 225 articles on culture, psychology and literature, as well as author of 7 books, his most recent is entitled Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life (Jossey-Bass, 2004), which describes a spiritual pilgrimage staying in 12 monasteries and Zen Buddhist centers in the United States over a three and a half month sojourn. He was also a presenter at Mythic Journeys 2004, and he presented a lecture and workshop on February 17 and 18, 2006, for the C.G. Jung Society of Atlanta, a partner of the Mythic Imagination Institute.

"Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,...And thus I'll take my pilgrimage." Sir Walter Raleigh, from "The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage."

The image of the pilgrim and the journey of pilgrimage, is ancient. Megalith cemeteries in Ireland dating back 7000 years reveal sites of burial worship. The Greeks trekked to Delphi; Sudama pilgrimaged to Krishna in Dwarka. Lourdes, Fatima, Croagh Patrick are all sites by which one undergoes a transition, engaging an interior as well as external journey. The pilgrim's path is a constellation: mythic, spiritual, physical, to say nothing of the psychological and emotional profundity of its progress and regress.

Not long ago, while in New York City on business, I had just enough free time to visit one site early Saturday morning. I chose to pilgrimage by subway to the aching cavity where once stood the twin towers. It too registers for me and others as a pilgrimage site, one that forever marks a change in America's psyche as a powerful place of remembrance.

But I want to speak of a recent pilgrimage undertaken by my wife and me up Croagh Patrick in Connemara on County Mayo's west coast of Ireland. It is a daunting peak, intimidating to approach. Here on this summit (which in Ireland is called the Reek and in the Irish language is Cruachan Aigli), which rises 765 meters, St. Patrick spent 40 days and nights in the year 441 fasting, in imitation of both Christ's and Moses' similar abstinence. Moreover, recently uncovered evidence reveals that the summit was occupied as early as the 3rd century BC.

When Sandy and I decided finally to visit the homeland, we marked Croagh Patrick as one of our essential destinations. Why the mountain drew us so powerfully we could not at first comprehend. But we learned that on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday of July, and a national pilgrimage day on the mountain, tens of thousands, many often barefoot, others on their knees, struggle to the summit. What is amazing is to learn that up until 1973 this pilgrimage occurred at night, with each pilgrim carrying a torch to create a stream of fire miles long.

We wanted to feel that same impulse, so we drove to the parking lot on the morning of September 12, put on our hiking boots, placed water bottles in our backpack, slipped into the halter of our camera straps, rented two walking sticks (plus deposit), and began our climb on a sunny breezy late morning. Way in the distance we could see specks of white and red and black in motion; none was larger than the period that ends this sentence. They were pilgrims ahead of us on the mountain. We looked at one another, took a deep breath, and began our ascent, along with a scattering of other souls full of energy and chattering away to one another. There were no signs or markers or warnings, as one might find in the States cautioning one to the intensity of the climb, the dangers of the ridges without rope or boundary markers, the rough rock and pebble-strewn terrain that can be more treacherous during the descent rather than the climb up. In fact, it was very much like Life itself, which to my knowledge, also comes with no warning labels or details about the intensity of what lies ahead.

I soon labeled the climb a pilgrimage of obstruction; there is no path to speak of; the rough stony surface disallows a grooved path to emerge. One can walk along the lip where there is dirt, but then one risks falling off the side, which pitches deeper as one ascends. Traffic was light since the tourist season was in decline, so I tried to meditate with a heavy breath as I walked slowly, with requisite gravitas, while attempting to block out the chattering around me. Sandy, just behind me, found her own pathway through the rocky surface.

Dante Alighieri, the archetypal poet-pilgrim, reveals that the middle passage of his Commedia, Purgatorio, is communal. Compared to the isolated fixed souls in Inferno, Purgatorio is closest to our life: souls trundle up the mountain, stopping to rest and talk to those they come upon. On the Reek, people descending are questioned, inevitably by those ascending, if they "made it," meaning to the top of the summit. Some did, others turned back at some point, while others made it to the level ridge that offers a respite from verticality until they begin the steepest part of the climb to the summit. We noticed that people hiked alone, meditating, while others chatted as if in a cool park on a Sunday stroll.

I began to see what a rich and complex analogy this climb was to life itself, both in topography, weather and population. Some sections were less angular and gave one a sense of real progress; others became very dangerous because of the thick rock debris and the pitch of the ascent. At times, we could take only ten steps before we had to rest, so steeply demanding was the mountain. Undaunted and unfazed, some folks whirred past us almost obsessed, so goal-driven they seemed to have chosen to ignore the journey for the summit.

One man who rested with us as he gained our position, told us he was 78 and wanted at this stage of life, to try it; he, like us, made it to the ridge, about three quarters of the way to the top. Yes, to admit we made it would be total blarney. A couple coming down ran at breakneck speed, sliding and glossing over the rough stones. More meditative or insulated souls kept their heads down as they passed in silence. Some climbers never paused to turn and admire the large lake and islands that began to open before the increasing vista behind us, all green and blue in the noon brilliance. Others slowed just enough to wait for their partners before beginning again for the summit. Some who made it to the top, stopped at almost every ascendant, like us, to tell us they achieved the most grand vista they had ever seen. Their eyes told us that they had envisioned something special and well-earned. Their language describing the summit was almost always religious, spiritual, wrapped in rapture, full of the colors of an epiphany.

Others we witnessed climbed only a few hundred feet, pulled out their cell phones and announced to someone below they were ready to descend. Others sat and visited, content to have made it just a hundred yards up. Some climbers were so ill-prepared for the pilgrimage, with no water, wearing street shoes, short sleeve shirts, no head covering. A very small number were barefoot, moving as if in a trance, slowly and with great conviction. We were told by one descender that on the previous birthday of St. Patrick, an Irish athlete ascended and descended the mountain 5 times in a 24 hour period. We found the story incredulous, but it is documented. Others, like me, paused often to pick up a small stone at several sections of the climb for a small altar I imagined creating at home in my study.

A man from Scotland paused as he passed us, which happened often as we were slow to ascend; he told us of his life in Scotland and why he was here climbing today. We smiled at him and his thick accent, not grasping five words of his utterance, but cheering him on nonetheless.

As we climbed to reach the summit, we noticed in the searing wind how some turned around immediately to begin the descent towards the specks of cars and people below. Others pulled over, sat on the grassy side of the mountain and absorbed the hard-earned vista that embraced each of us at this height. Around us were sheep and goats, all sprayed with a blotch of blue or red to designate ownership. My wife and I rested, ate a candy bar and drank water, content to have come this far and very aware of our limits.

We both realized that making it to the summit was, after all, not the point. The mountain told us that the journey IS the destination, the climb IS the goal, the motion IS the still point of achievement. What is to be achieved is not what is above us but within us, in the craggy crevasses and jagged ridges of our own souls. From this point on the high ridge, we could see to the other mountains beyond the Reek. That vision satisfied us; we began the descent.

Our walking sticks helped cushion our knees immensely, for the descent was more treacherous than the climb. Sandy encouraged me to go ahead, that she would catch up. On the way down she fell on the loose gravel or pesky rocks five times. Twice she cried from the exhaustion and pain; we had been hiking now for over three hours. Each time, she pulled herself up with the stick and began again. The mountain forgives in its harshness. The pilgrimage is paradoxical: it is a blessed pain and a suffering that finds meaning. We descended slowly to the bottom, talking much more often with others to relieve the pain and the fatigue. Close to the bottom stood a white statue of St. Patrick, arms up in greeting and perhaps a little pity. We saluted him as we passed.

At the bottom we entered a restaurant. Showers and food were available. Sandy grabbed the edge of a table to counteract her vertigo. We drank bottles of water, ate sandwiches and sweets in voracious silence. We looked back and up; there we could see the small dots of people trekking to the ridge, then on to the summit. We knew they were pausing, greeting one another, sharing stories, laughing, and making light of their pain. Behind them, below them, above them, the mountain was dark, even in sunshine -- and so silent, so welcoming, so indifferent, so beckoning to push into suffering, so like God.

I hope the mountain will forgive me the poaching of four small stones, like some gray amphibian eggs that sit beside me now as I write thousands of miles from their home. They are memories of the mountain and of the wind that blew hard off the ridge, parting the sheep's thick wool, the same wind that coaxed and caressed our backs as we descended.

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