The Peasants and The Mariners. Brian Bouldrey

Golden Age of Things

      You might wonder how many bags of ducks and bunnies I carried on the bus from Dublin to Belfast, where we begin our walk along the Ulster Way. I will tell you now: a lot of them. Hikers become obsessed with their backpacks, which, like turtle shells, are the homes on their backs. It is amazing what you will place in a bag when you know you will only have those things for an entire month. What a mariner takes on a journey are the things he considers most homely. Think how things weigh heavily upon the body.

      And so I am telling you about myself when I list the things I carry. Besides the basic equipment of the backpacker (lightweight shirts and shorts and towels made of material that wicks dry with a snap, a tent and a sleeping bag that both roll down to the size of a sandwich, rain-gear, a flashlight, maps, magic pellets that make toilet water an ambrosia fit for a god, the home surgery first aid kit, and a canteen for water), I have taken on the pointless, heavy luxuries of hard candy ducks, a journal, a book with the ridiculous title The Portable James Joyce, and five bags of flavored potato chips. As I read the book, I will peel off the pages like the skin of an onion, thinking this will lighten the weight of my pack.

      Garth reveals his own character flaws by carrying our well-detailed hiking plan, another guidebook (a heavy one), and a backpack with so many slots and side pockets that it looks like it belongs to a fetishist. There is even a removable satellite pack that must have been designed by somebody who never backpacks, for it sags low and out from the pack, making Garth work harder on the hike. But he is a loyal hiker—he never ditches the heavy pack, the hiking plan he created, or me.

      I am taste-testing the new potato chip flavors they never give us back home (Worcester Sauce, Roasted Chicken, Prawn Cocktail, Crispy Duck & Hoisin, Cajun Squirrel). One of the girls from a hen party (we call them bachelorette parties) needs to have a pee, though I am not sure where she thinks she can here, on a bridge looking over a single man fishing and four other men advising him on how to fish. As she passes me, I let myself sniff her, to see if they’re drinking back there and, if so, what they’re drinking. But she smells like herbicide—dandelion killer—and not entirely unpleasantly so. I will smell this smell very often over the days ahead. “I can’t believe you’re eating those crisps,” the girl points at my bag. Nobody had a problem with my “Prawn Cocktail” chips, but it seems “Cajun Squirrel” is too much.

      I put on my best American accent. “They’re exotic,” I say, but they are not. “Cajun Squirrel” should be a flavor of my home, where Cajun country is. And where “eatin” squirrels reside. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She has to pee. If there are peasants and there are mariners, the hen party is a festival of the peasants.

      Garth opens up his itinerary pouch, filled with dates and daily maps he will dispose of each day. He is looking for the place on the map where we are at this moment. He unfolds the down-to-the-farmhouse-ratio Michelin map, using the heads of two Boy Scouts for support. They are oblivious. He is quiet as another hen dismounts with a pack of menthols. Then he says, “We’re not even to Newry yet.” I don’t know what that means, but it’s not a good thing for people with agendas.

      In all the accounts of travel I have read, not much is said of arrival. If it is spoken of, it is with sadness, as though it were a death, a little death for a lot of struggle. But when the king arrives in his castle in a play, he is surrounded by noisy fanfare. Doorbells are like fanfare trumpets. When somebody is at the door, the story, the golden age of the king, is just beginning.

      “Now I’m thirsty,” I tell Garth. He agreed to carry the water if I carried the first aid kit. But he is conserving our water rations, because we didn’t realize how long this trip from Dublin to Belfast would last. My feet and tongue swell from eating so many salty chips. I look out at the salty sea.

      Garth’s head is still buried in the map. “Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten all those chips.” It’s the way he says it that makes me pull out an Angry Duck. Both Garth and I are teachers—we have taught a class together, one on food and politics. He taught on Tuesdays and I taught on Thursdays. There were two separate lesson plans. Can you imagine what they looked like?

      Then he looks up, and you can see the whites of his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me we were going to be hiking within three miles of the Bushmills whiskey distillery?” He grabs my empty potato chip bag and uses it for trash. And by trash, I mean the pages of our itinerary.