Throwing Stones

an essay

         They pulled a body out of the water yesterday. Around 11:30 am, the news said, people saw a body falling from the cliffs down into the icy sea. The Garda came, as did the Irish Coast Guard, and they pulled the floating corpse out of the ocean. They had identified the man but hadn’t released his name or whether it was an accidental or intentional fall. Regardless, if it cleared the cliffs completely, propelling itself far enough out as to avoid the bulky extremities of the cliffs, which an intact, floating body might suggest, the drop could have been over seven hundred feet and would have taken a little over seven seconds with the body reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. If it didn’t clear the cliffs though, it would have bounced and banged its way down, accelerating and decelerating, only to find a cold and short refuge in the Atlantic before the cruel waves would only continue the beating against the rocks, the bottom of the cliffs, hard. A beautiful place to die but hardly comfortable.
         There was nothing else about him in the weeks after. No name released. New searches brought up a new man, a new face, last seen in his car around the Cliffs of Moher in early June. It is July now. A young man, likely jumped to his death. I learned that this wasn’t uncommon. People go missing at and around the cliffs fairly often. While there are no statistics—at least not that I could find—of how many people die at the cliffs each year, by suicide or accident, a quick Google search with keywords such as “suicide,” “dead,” or “jump” brings up quite a few hits, links, and stories. There’s even a sign up on the cliffs asking people if they “need to talk?” with a number provided to call.
         Because it is easy to jump there. The barriers aren’t really barriers at all. Instead, they are short stonewalls characteristic of the Irish countryside built about 15-20 feet from the edge of the cliffs. The prescribed path is between this wall and a wire fence. It is cramped and narrow and each oncoming person causes me to tuck in my arms or turn sideways and suck in my stomach hard. To the right is the more worn path. A wider path, it’s the one most people take when exploring the cliffs, the path that is technically forbidden because the ground is dusty and eroded and weathered. On the very edge, the ground is broken. People walk on top of the worn rocks overhanging a long emptiness. It is no exaggeration, no cliché, to say that one false step would be fatal because there is nothing stable about the cracks and dips at the twisting and turning edge. Before stepping on to the path, we all notice a sign: “In memory of those who have lost their lives at the Cliffs of Moher.”
         “That’s probably to scare people into staying on the path,” one of us in the group says.
         It worked for us, at least for a little. We stick to the narrow path for the first couple hundred yards out onto the cliffs. We slowly make our way up to a point on the cliffs that juts out into the ocean, safely with what appears to our novice eyes to be a strong structural foundation of rock underneath. We hop over the short stonewall and now there’s no wall between us and the 700 feet fall. It feels no different.
         “You’d definitely die on impact,” Connor says. We all agree. But we aren’t thinking about dying really, at least I’m not. The brain and body do a funny thing when they are that high up and that close to the edge. They scheme together and take in the beauty of the waves, the view out into the ocean, the sight of the small ferryboat rocking around in the water with tourists seeing the cliffs from an alternative view. Usually scared to death of heights—even a ladder or stepstool can make my legs shake—my brain and body remain normal. I am disconnected from the real possibility that something could happen and I could be falling and bouncing and booming just like that man who killed himself or the others who kill themselves every year and even the ones who fall unintentionally because they slipped or because it’s gusty up there.
         There’s a casualness with which we treat the cliffs. A certain complacency, a lack of respect for the geological structure we stand and meander atop. We chat about things I don’t remember, about how beautiful it is, about how it’s surprisingly less windy on top of the cliffs than it was by the gift shops, about how freaking awesome it is to be standing where we are right now.
         My friend Katie and I sit on a ledge with another shelf about four feet below it. We pose for pictures, some smiling, some looking out into the distance and some laughing with each other. As we do this, Eli drops down to the shelf and puts his hands on the ledge we are sitting on and latches onto the rock with his arms. He twists his face into one of faux fear and strength as Connor takes his photo, making sure to exclude any sight of the ledge Eli stands on. It needs to look real. We all laugh and the photo turns out great. It really looks like he’s hanging there, gripping onto the rocks for his life. In this moment, I don’t know about the man who jumped, or the other man who may have jumped. I would learn that a few days later. Now, I imagine if we had known we would have acted differently with less complacency for our own lives and more respect for geology and wind and gravity.
         We linger here for a while longer, throwing small pebbles off the edge only to find that the strong wind just off the edge of the cliffs causes many of them to come right back at us. We learn that if you launch the stone in a spinning motion it’s most likely to come back at you and your friends’ faces. Others, thrown cleanly out, slightly spring back, as if attempting to get back on to land only to fall and hit the side of the cliffs and tumble down. We spend a few minutes doing this, laughing and picking up more rocks. Still sitting on the ledge, my body has a hard time letting me throw the rocks at full force as if using all the strength in my arm would somehow cause my body to fly out in that same wind, hit the side of the cliffs and tumble down. My momentum scares me. My legs begin to cramp up, the usual effect heights have on me. I need to not be sitting on this ledge. Slowly I get myself up and I scurry a few feet back on to stable ground. Relieved and safe now. Bodies aren’t like small stones because they don’t blow back.

From summer 2015.