i shared a hammock

There was a red-headed, visually impaired stranger sat in the back seat of my friends Toyota.

Who is this guy? I wondered.

He shook my hand and said his name was “Nick”.

Is he a friend of ours?

Is he a stranger that my friends had picked up off the street?

He’s wearing a very nice pair of glasses, his accent is foreign and he seems incredibly comfortable around all of my friends.

That’s all I know for certain.

The gang and I had decided to go for a hike that day.

They picked me up from my front door sometime mid-morning and we hit the road, stat.

We’ve got about an hour and a half before we get to the woods. I thought.

This is my chance to evaluate the seemingly new member of our cohort.

“So… where are you from, man?”

I figured this would be a good way to get to know the unspecified individual.

“South Africa”

Very cool.

I like the idea of South Africa, I always have.

Mountains, surf, low cost of living, cool people AND it’s far, far away from what I’d consider to be home.

That question took me one step closer to the truth, but I still don’t understand exactly what he’s doing here.

In this car…

With my friends.

“Nice man, so how exactly do you know these guys?” I asked, looking curiously around the car.

They all burst into laughter.

Is this some kind of sick joke? Are these people simply here to ridicule me?

I needed answers.

“When I was 14 [8 years ago], I was in Dublin on a school exchange. I met ______ at a party. We sort of kept in touch and I thought I’d give her a text now that I’m here for a few days… I arrived last night and she invited me on this hike.”

Ah, a plausible story…

I like this guy.

None of us really know who he is, he doesn’t seem to know any of us, yet he seems to understand the vibrations within the car.

He gets our humor, he doesn’t make us nervous and he’s not afraid to get in a moving metal box full of strangers.

We’re going to get along well. I’m sure of it.

That hike was wonderful.

We walked around barefoot, swam in an icy river, climbed trees, ate licorice and we all got to know Nick a bit better.

Everything just felt right.

Collectively, we decided to adopt Nick into our little family.

We didn’t take a vote, or make any sort of verbal commitment, it just happened.

From this point on, until he goes home, he’s with us. I decided.

I’ll make sure of it.

The following Tuesday we invited him to come rock climbing (He out-climbed us all) and then back to my house for a (spoiled) surprise birthday party that I held for the Toyota’s wonderful driver.

We had a great time!

Wine, music, barbeque, umbrellas (to protect the barbeque from the inevitable Irish rain), fireplace effects on the TV, tiramisu with tomatoes on it. Don’t ask why.

I have a loop pedal effect on my amp. That sort of thing becomes extremely exciting to a group of musicians after a few bottles of wine.

It was a cozy night…

After the cake, myself and Nick were invited to spend the weekend in someone’s grandmothers house on a small island off the West Coast of Ireland.

“We’d love for you to come but there’s no space in the car for you guys, you’ll have to find your own way down.” They told us.

Myself and Nick looked at each other.

No problem… We said, without the need for words.

We’ll get there…

This is how our conversation went the next day:

We met up in Dublin City Centre about 2.5 hours after Nick said “Yeah man let’s go”.

I never did the “bit of stuff to do in the afternoon”. No ragrets.

We came to the conclusion that it’d be best to take a train since it was already 6pm and attempting to get out of Dublin City on foot is a psychotic undertaking to say the least (Especially when you’re running out of daylight).

We would’ve been eaten alive trying to walk on the Dublin motorway.

The train ride was lovely. We ate hummus and talked physics.

When we got off it was raining, so like any normal humans, we decided to go for a walk and check out all of the churches in Mallow (3 in total), before finding a cozy spot in a park where we set up a hammock, in which we slept…

Together.

Now, when I say “slept” I really meant that we just lay still, trying not to fall out of the hammock, attempting sleep and waiting desperately for the sun to come up so we could get out of that claustrophobic cocoon.

It wasn’t the most comfortable of sleeping arrangements, I won’t lie…

I got pins and needles everywhere and we took turns to fall out, but I will admit…

It did the job.

The next morning we packed up camp, got a cup of (shit) coffee and began traversing the remaining 140 kms of wet, Irish backroads.

The second day we walked almost 20kms, got picked up by 5 cars, played some chess, talked about some serious shit and got completely soaked…

Pretty impressive stuff considering we were fueled by nothing but “5 Roses Tea” and copious quantities of exotically flavored hummus.

We made it to Cahersiveen, our final destination before crossing to the island, about 5 hours before the rest of our battalion.

Sure, we had a 29 hour head start, but everyone knows that the finish line is what matters, not the start line.

We’ve won the race.

But at what cost?

Sure we can boast and gloat of our victory, tell tales of our wonderous adventure for years to come… But ultimately, we were left sitting in a petrol station for 5 hours, with damp shoes, a few cups of tea and an inevitable lull in conversation.

I don’t know about Nick, but I was pretty damn tired.

That being said, we had a fantastic time.

Two handsome champions

Our friends picked us up at 11pm that night and we proceeded to have a wonderful weekend.

I won’t go into the details but it mostly consisted of swimming, barefoot wondering, extensive wine consumption, music playing and shite talking.

It was one of the most memorable weekends I’ve had in a while.

Before I sat down to write this letter for you, I was racking my brain to figure out what the lesson was here.

What wisdom did I pull from this adventure?

The importance of spontaneity?

The beauty of friendship?

The significance of rest?

The virtue in trust?

I learned all of these things.

But none of these were quite it.

I figured that there’s no use in telling you the lessons I learned from my own adventure as they’re laden with bias and skewed by my own overwhelming vanity.

So I called for backup.

I wanted the perspective of someone who was there, in the flesh. But also someone who could take a third-person perspective on our unhinged acts of madness.

Someone intelligent enough to give me an insightful lesson from the events of last weekend. A lesson that’s really worth sharing with you.

So I asked the one person I felt could give me the right answer, what she learned from the trip.

"Going with my gut” she said.

Damn. I thought.

That’s it.

From the initial car ride, to the hike, the birthday party, the hitchhiking, the hammock sharing, the wine drinking, the staying up all night, the barefoot escapades, the entire group only had one common method of navigation…

Our guts.

Nick could’ve been a fucking serial killer for all we knew. (Thankfully, I’m pretty sure he’s not)

We could’ve been picked up by a complete lunatic while we were wondering on the side of the road.

We could’ve gotten to the island and realized that we’re all sick of each others company and disgusted by sight of each other’s exposed toes.

Anything could’ve happened to us.

But we navigated this degenerate weekend by trusting our guts and ultimately, we weren’t let down.

When I first met Nick in the car, my gut told me that we’d get along well.

From the moment I learned about how he got to know my friends, I knew we’d have no issue hitchhiking across the country and sleeping in a hammock together.

How did I know that?

I have no idea.

I just knew.

Call me naïve, call me ignorant, call me a complete idiot if you want.

But when I know something.

I damn well know it.

So if there’s anything for you to take away from this letter.

Know this…

You don’t have to know why you know something in order for you to know it.

Just trust your gut.

It might lead to you having the greatest adventure of your life.

Wishing you all the best on whatever adventures you choose to embark,

Louis

PS - Nick is now back in South Africa.

I’ll miss you bru. I know we’ll cross paths again.