There was a two-week stretch in May where the weather was legendary. Days were sunny, dry, and allegedly the warmest in all of Europe, beating out even getaways like southern Spain and Greece. Coupling that with sunsets starting to take place past 10 pm—the long-awaited spring after such a dark and wet winter!—was intoxicating. There was a headiness in Dublin; people gathered in droves to picnic in parks, lounge in floaties in the Royal Canal, drink on roofs, spill out of pubs—every night swelled with opportunity.
Tough as it was to tear myself away from the ebullience of the city, I spent one of the weekends during this stretch on a dive trip with the Trinity scuba club to Hook Head, Co. Wexford. When I arrived, I went for a shakeout run around the peninsula. It was one of those moments where I couldn’t believe that what I was experiencing was my own life. Everything was just too perfect! Lush green fields dropping straight into a glassy ocean as if carved that way. Black cliffs hiding nooks of wildflowers, hypnotic blowholes sucking and spewing onyx seawater, cows who looked like they were straight out of Helios’ seven herds. Viking ruins. Church ruins. The staunch lighthouse at the end of the peninsula, the oldest operating one in the world. The loudest sound was the wind. Compared to the press of people trying to maximize their social life in the city following recommendations from social media accounts, Hook felt like it was from another era: just other divers, campers, and locals.
The diving didn’t disappoint; that weekend, we had the best visibility I’ve experienced yet in Ireland. We squeezed through limestone gulleys, poked around a shipwreck, surrendered to the surges pulling and pushing at us, and floated under blowholes where light cut through the water in sweeping, cinematic shafts. I met a curious juvenile seal who wouldn’t leave this strange group of visitors alone, fearlessly coming face-to-face with us and prodding a diver’s fins. I saw a male cuckoo wrasse in all its multicolored glory—as protogynous hermaphrodites, males are a relatively rare treat to spot. (Cuckoo wrasses are born as females, with a single dominant male in the area. Once dead, that male is replaced by the senior-most female transitioning sex.)
After three days of glittering diving (and grueling walks carrying our kit over several miles of treacherous, slippery terrain—but why dwell on that?) we closed out the trip by watching the Eurovision broadcast live. I’d never watched Eurovision before (my knowledge of the event is capped at ABBA and Måneskin) but everyone else quickly caught me up, giving me the rundown on what makes a “good” Eurovision song, who the favorites of the year were, political controversies surrounding the event, and of course the towering legacy Ireland holds with Dustin the Turkey and Jedward. Nestled on that couch, getting swept up in lively debates about which countries delivered on the Eurovision promise with my dive friends, I had another out-of-body moment where I had to remind myself this was my life. I’ve been converted into someone who is wholly invested in Eurovision for years to come. This past year on the island has been filled with all sorts of these kinds of moments while getting to know Ireland from different angles—within its mountains and forests; under its oceans; through its music, literature, and theater; within its pubs, through its difficult history of housing and social infrastructure. Every time it feels improbable that I’ve actually been gifted the time for all this exploration and been graciously welcomed into the fold by so many new friends.
There’s a point in every dive where I pull myself out of the lull brought on by the comfortable weightlessness of neutral buoyancy and the rhythm of my own breathing through the regulator, where I realize I’m breathing underwater, in this completely alien world, floating through valleys and along the faces of 30 m walls. My dive buddy and I will share an incredulous look. It’s cliché, but it must be what flying feels like. And gratitude always washes through me, for the chance I’ve been given to spend time discovering this wonderful new world.