I took a one way flight to Dublin,
Away from the shores of the promised land
And if you never know anything else about me
That should tell you what a fool I am
— The Pilgrim

When I graduated from Washington State University in 1991, I didn’t really have a plan.

I had visited Ireland briefly with my brother and his drinking buddies two years before and wanted to go back and spend more time learning and living in the land of my ancestors. My dad offered me a job after graduation, but I’d have to live in New Jersey and I just couldn’t.

So dad referred me to an old friend of his that was setting up military contract consulting offices in Ireland ahead of the establishment of the European Economic Community — a forerunner of the EU. Somehow, this would have given him an inside track on NATO and EEC contracts. He offered to hire me to rent an office and set up a storefront in Dublin – just get established and hang out of a shingle.

I kissed goodbye to my college sweetheart and booked a one-way ticket to Ireland, with my passport and six-month work visa in hand. The internet as we know it was still in diapers, so I had to arrange everything by pay phone. I checked into a youth hostel and picked up the newspaper to start looking for office space in the classified ads. I knew no one (and, honestly, had no idea what I was doing). I was scared to death.

However, that summer, Yugoslavia broke up and started falling into warring factions.

When I arrived in July, the EEC treaty looked to be on hold while Europe coped with the new reality of a post-communist fallout. As I read the paper, I wondered if it was all going to fall apart. I called Mr. Malone long-distance from a pay phone outside a pub and asked him how to proceed. He said to hold off, to wait and see. As I hung up, I realized I had never asked how or when I was going to get paid — and based on our phone call, the job itself had just evaporated for the foreseeable future.

Dive into the unknown

One day in Dublin — alone, 6,000 miles from home without enough money for a return ticket. No job in a country that had about a 17% unemployment rate. I nursed a pint of Guinness to keep my hands from shaking. Someone at the hostel told me to check the cork board, which was mostly pinned notices of people looking for roommates, looking for work, or trying to form a band. I found an index card and a three-fold brochure with a phone number advertising a “night warden” position at the Carlingford Adventure Center. I called. An unsure sounding fellow told me to hop on a bus and come in for an interview. Room and board and 25 quid a week (about $50). I was desperate.

I dived further into the unknown, trusting fate.

The bus took me north of the border with Northern Ireland, in the midst of the Troubles. A black British Navy warship patrolled Carlinford Loch. I got off the bus and walked to a friendly looking pink building housing a pub on the edge of the road. It was the only time in Ireland in all my years when I felt unwelcome in a pub. I asked for directions from the inhabitants and was given a look that brushed me out the door.

What was I getting myself into?

I hauled my duffle bag deeper into the little village and found the Adventure Center — mountain biking and sailing and outdoor activity center housed adjacent to a medieval old stone building and Tholsel gate. The owner, Tom McArdle, informed me that my job was to check people into the hostel at night after hours. I had no experience, but no one else had answered Tom’s tack-board advertisement so “Eh, you’ll have to do.”

It was the best job I’ve ever had.

Running the ‘rescue boat’

I ran the outboard motor of the “rescue boat” while my coworker Paddy taught sailing and windsurfing lessons. I learned — and helped organize — orienteering outings. I explored the buildings and climbed around on King John’s castle, which was built in the late 12th century and still loomed over the idyllic harbor. Tom even had me help develop a series of teambuilding exercises for the Irish and Japanese executives of Brother Industries, an electronics and electrical equipment company. Days off were few, but I was able to hitchhike and ramble around ancient Ireland where the hero Cúchulainn had his many adventures.

As summer turned to fall I’d hang a sign on the door saying “inquire across the street, ask for Ed.” Thus I “worked” from a table in the back of PJ O’Hare’s pub next to the turf fire. As October neared its end, Tom told me “well, right, that’s all I have for ya” and the job was over. Amy, my college girlfriend — now my wife of these past 34 years — told me it was time to come home.

I had spent what little I had made on food and drink and travel and hadn’t a punt to my name. No return ticket, not even bus fare. There was a group of Dublin City College students up for the weekend, and one of them remarked on my Levi’s 501s — back then still made in America and expensive and trendy in Europe. He offered to buy them off me for the equivalent of $100. I had packed six pairs of Levi’s jeans (because they were only $14 when I bought them back home). I sold all but one pair to other students and took an order to buy and ship some more to my friends in Carlingford. My Kiwi friend Pete and I snuck aboard the student’s charter bus for a ride back to Dublin.

I bought a plane ticket at a travel agency but could only afford to fly to New York. Thankfully, dad said he’d come pick me up from New Jersey. I bought Amy a Claddagh ring on Grafton street and planned to put it on her finger the moment I got back home.

There wasn’t enough money for a hotel, but enough for pints, so Pete and I stayed up all night with a few of the college students. I sold my last pair of jeans at the bus station in the morning, changing in the station bathroom to a pair of old sweatpants just before the bus to the airport took me away.

The next generation

I think of this adventure now because my daughters, Grace and Lindsay, are about to fly off around the world. Grace is headed to Borneo to see orangutans. Lindsay flies off to Turkey a few weeks from now. They will fly alone, and I am both hopelessly worried and yet overjoyed with their opportunity for these adventures. I wish I could go with them, but I am bursting with pride at their courage to go without me.

I didn’t want to go to Ireland on a vacation; I wanted an adventure, which is something more. Adventures are unpredictable. You know you are on an adventure when things go wrong, when plans fall apart, when you have to adapt.

You know you are on an adventure when you only have a moment to accept your fear, take a single deep breath, and move on.

I remember a cannonball of lead in the pit of my stomach the day I climbed on that plane for Ireland. I have that same pit now as the girls make their final preparations.

I am told by friends that “the world is so dangerous,” but 20 years in emergency medicine have taught me that danger lurks as much in the stairways, bathtubs and ladders near to home as in the world abroad.

They are at the right age to see the world. Fly now. Make memories now before the reality of work and bills and debt and car payments tether you to earth. Fly now into the unpredictable tomorrow thousands of miles away.

For in truth, every tomorrow is unpredictable.

Better to face it with a view for adventure.

•••

Ed Hunt is an emergency medicine nurse who lives in Rosburg with his wife, Amy. He was a staff reporter for the Chinook Observer in the 1990s.