By Cormac MacConnell

FEELING frisky and being in the area anyway, I decided that I’d climb Croagh Patrick a few Sundays ago. I got early out of my Westport bed and had a good breakfast, and I had a pair of boots and a walking stick in the car.

I’ve rarely been in Lecanvey at any other time of the year then the big pilgrimage midsummer Sunday when thousands upon thousands of pilgrims climb the holy mountain most commonly called The Reek. So this was special.

The morning was good enough and I had a good jacket and the leather hat Ciara bought for me in Australia. It was strange to see the village empty.

No cars in front of Campbell’s famed pub at the bottom of the long road that leads to the peak, nobody selling souvenirs or burgers from lines of stalls and caravans on the way up to St. Patrick’s statue which stands about where the real climb begins.

This hare must have thought it was still March because, behind St. Patrick’s stone shoulder, he was indeed behaving in a mad fashion. He was sitting up on his hind end, as if daring me to follow, then darting one way and another and jumping high in the air. Strange behavior altogether, almost as strange as a solitary bearded pilgrim trudging heavenwards under an Australian hat.

It was when I came closer that I realized there were two hares, not one and, when I came closer still, I also learned that I was not the only pilgrim on the mountain either.

There was a thin man in a blue anorak and a baseball cap sitting quietly on a rock just off the pilgrim path. He was watching the hares.

I nodded at him and he nodded at me and I stopped, and for a little while the two of us watched the hares. They were now facing up to each other, mere inches apart, and I swear I saw the bigger of the two throw a beautiful right hook into the ribcage of the other.

“He’s up for a fight anyway,” I said to the thin man. Somehow I knew he was a local man, probably on his own land even, checking sheep or stock, probably sheep up here.

“That’s not a he, that’s the she,” he said. “She’s the bigger of the two. She does not want to have anything to do with him you see.

“That happens at this time of the year. She’s not mad at all. That’s only a youngster of a male feeling his oats, hoping to get lucky. She won’t have any truck at all with him. She’s waiting for a right bucko to come along, that’s what she’s doing.”

It was actually a remarkable sight. When the reality of what I was seeing had been explained to me, that it was a mating ritual that was not going to work out, I just stood there and watched as lively a three-rounder as you’d see in any ring.

The lady was actually boxing exquisitely. I think she was a southpaw too. And it was boxing!

She was sitting up high in her tracks, and any time she could land one to either the head or shoulders of the juvenile male she clattered him.

And, of course, he kept coming back for more. And she kept dishing it out with the height of enjoyment, ding-dong elemental stuff on the holy mountain of St. Patrick.

And Clew Bay with its islands starting to sparkle away down below as the sun broke through the mist. And myself and the thin man watching it all.

We talked a bit before I continued my climb. He was local and not inquisitive at all.

We talked mostly about the weather and how quiet it was when there was no big pilgrimage occasion like in June. Truly, he said, there is never a day but that there is a pilgrim or two climbing the mountain, people from all over the world. He did not think he’d ever been out, even in the depths of winter, that you’d not meet somebody.

And he also told me, squinting his eyes upwards, that it would almost certainly mist up more than a bit inside a couple of hours, and maybe I should not go all the way. It was easy to get lost in the mist.

The boxing hares passed no heed at all on me as I left him and ventured on another bit anyway. He stayed where he was.

There was a clatter from above, the sound of shifting scree, and a couple came speeding down towards me from above.

They were a young couple, American I would think, wearing identical yellow anoraks and wool caps, armed with climbing poles and moving at a very high speed indeed. They just nodded at me and kept going.

Then I was alone again, feeling the climb a little bit too, and thinking of all the occasions I’d been on The Reek before, climbing the traditional night time climbs of the 1960s that had to be abandoned eventually by the Archbishop of Tuam because the young people began bringing booze up with them and throwing wild parties among the rocks.

And watching the pilgrims who climbed barefoot all the way, their feet bleeding on the stones and on the floor of the little oratory on the summit where the Masses were celebrated.

And remembering the special airy feeling you got up there after Mass, looking down over Clew Bay.

Sadly it began to mist up when I was about a half-hour from the summit, and that would have been an hour extra if I’d chanced it. I heeded the warning of the thin man, with regret, and descended just ahead of the spreading mist cap.

The mist was so thick I’d surely have been lost if I’d gone ahead, and I’d left my cell phone behind in the car as well. I could have been a story in the Irish papers on Monday morning!

Anyway I came down, mission incomplete, and I met nobody on the way and both the hares and the thin man were gone. When I got home I checked, and dammit he was right about the hares too.

There is a selection process involved here, and the female waits for the right one to come along, just like the song. Meanwhile she’s a southpaw on the flank of the holy mountain. And a fine sight to see.