The sky is a smooth, pearly grey on the morning of August 27th when we climb out of our rental car in Ireland. We stand in a small parking lot jutting off what I assume is someone’s house. Only one other car sits parked in the space. Green grass sprawls in all directions, littered only with the shapes of cows and crisscrossed by narrow roads.
I zip into my rain jacket and pull the hood up around my mess of tangled hair. The drizzly weather is sure to make the ratty nest on top of my head even more of a disaster.
But I don’t really care. We’ve been in Ireland for about a week and every day is a blank slate.
Nowhere to be, just you and me… I hum to myself. Jackson exchanges a few words with the nice lady that came from the house. Then we walk.
We make our way down the narrow road, even narrower than the one we came in on. All the roads in Ireland are narrow. The gravel crunches beneath our feet and I watch the shape of Jackson’s body moving confidently down the path before us. I follow.
I chuckle when he shakes his butt, dancing to a tune in his own head. My heart melts when he turns back to smile and wink at me. And my grin is ear to ear when he asks, “Are you happy?”
We come across two other hikers as they head back to what I assume was their car in the parking lot. “There’s no one out there,” one of them says. “It’s peaceful and perfect.”
We exchange pleasantries and then quicken our pace as we continue to our destination. Much of our trip has been wandering: we haven’t had a real plan in mind except to simply drive across Ireland. We pull out our map each night and make arrangements for the next few days, ask the people we stay with what we should do in the area, and flip through the Ireland guidebook to fill in the gaps. We listen to music and roll down the windows. Sometimes we wonder aloud what Kona would do if she was here.
We didn’t have an itinerary when we hopped off the plane in Dublin. But we knew one day of the trip would be reserved for visiting the Cliffs of Moher.
We heard from many people that though it is certainly “touristy” and littered with people, it is still an impressive, must-see sight.
I wonder if it’s the weather or the unique entrance Jackson located away from the main destination that is keeping our path so quiet and tourist-free. Probably both.
I follow Jackson down the path, eager to get to our destination and yet quite content to be walking with him in silence. I can’t wait to see the view, and yet the one I’m basking in is perfect, too. Wherever you are, that’s where we are, kind of loving… I sing in my head.
We walk and walk and then the path veers to the right. There they are, stretching before us in absolute magnificence. Deep, dark jagged edges plunge into the sea. We mosey down a dirt path forged between the green grass and gape at the mass of rock we stand on, stretching before us but dropping off steeply beside us.
There are no tourists in site. Only us. We walk. We walk and walk together, mostly in silence. It is cold and wet. We stop and sit, leaning into each other as we take in one of the most famous sites in the entire world, completely alone.
“Lindsey Beth,” Jackson says. “Do you want to get married?”
I’ve certainly imagined this moment in my head and thought I would say, “Of course.” or “Yes. Yes!”but instead my breath catches in my throat and my response is very quiet as my heart hammers in my chest because I had hoped he would ask and yet still it catches me by surprise. “Yeah,” I say, nodding my head against his arm.
“You do?” he asks. I turn and and look him in the eye. A couple dozen thoughts race through my head in about one, stuttering heartbeat, but one thought is the clearest of all: I’ll follow him just about anywhere.
I nod again and plant my lips on his. I hope that kiss says everything I can’t say because as much I love to string words together, I can’t do it on the spot.
Later I’ll tell him how perfect this moment is. Later I’ll tell him how much I love him, that we have so many adventures ahead and that I can’t wait to see where our journey takes us. I’ll spend days, months, years trying to explain to him what he means to me. We’ll continue to climb mountains, slug through valleys, celebrate and mourn together. We’ll dance, sing, cry, sleep, argue, and cheer for each other. I’m quite certain we have some incredibly wonderful days in our future. I’m also sure that we will have some devastating one’s too.
But in this moment we don’t talk about any of that. I kiss him and ask if he is serious (because I’d thrown all my romantic ideas of just “yes, of course” out the window). We set up the phone to take our picture with the Cliffs of Moher stretching in the background.
We make our way back to the car and as we walk and talk about our wedding I again think about everything that is sure to come as we walk the trail of life together: good times and bad times, highs and lows, mountaintops and valleys, successes and failures, joyous moments and terrible heartache.
But as we walk the real life trail along the Cliffs of Moher, as flat and easy as life is at this particular point in time, I know that no matter what our trail looks like in the future, no matter how steep it is sure to be: I just want to be on the trail with this man. I want to keep walking together, forever.
PS: That same day we got a flat tire while getting lost trying to find our stay for the night and though that’s extremely unfortunate I told Jackson “I’ll never forget this day” and the whole thing just confirmed to me that no matter what life throws our way I’m thankful to have this guy as my partner.