On Pilgrimage
For millennia, the faithful have embarked on lengthy journeys to holy places at the far reaches of the world. These trips were both an act of faith—pilgrims in a perilous land placing their physical safety in the hands of the divine—and a demonstration of faith and devotion to the almighty. They abandon the safety of home and routine and take their chances on the road and its accompanying dangers. Armored by their faith, propelled by devotion, they risk the physical to commune with the metaphysical.
In that grand, sublime tradition Colleen and I travelled to Skellig Michael, a rocky island off the coast of western Ireland that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to an ancient monastery, and most importantly (for my purposes), the place where directors J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson shot vital sequences in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
We departed from Portmagee after spending the night in a room above a pub by the water. The landing situation on Skellig Michael is sketchy (see the Force Awakens video above for a good shot of the single-boat pier), so the hired boats that haul tourists on the hour-long journey won’t make the trip if swells exceed two meters. We were lucky; at the tail end of the season, the weather and the seas cooperated, and by about 8:30 AM we were off, sitting on benches on the back of a lobster-boat-style vessel like the ones in the picture below.
Portmagee.
Along the way, we stared at mist layered over Irish cliffs.
Little Skellig was the first of the Skelligs to come into view. Its only inhabitants are (many) birds. Here it is on the return trip, after the sun came out.
Landing
To land on Skellig Michael, the boatman cruises up to a small concrete pad big enough for a single vessel, and a crewman tries to pass a line through a metal ring bolted into the pad. After threading a rope through that ring, the crewman holds it tight, fighting the waves as he tries to keep the boat tight against the pad and the boat bucks in protest, and the passengers hop off onto narrow stairs etched into the concrete pad. Here’s where and why the sea-states matter; on our day, the chop was was .9 meters, and it was bad enough to make it a tricky landing.
Only space for one boat at a time.
The Climb
After landing, it’s a quick walk along a wide, flat path carved into the island’s side to the crop of modest buildings visible in the picture below. There we received a safety brief from one of the several people who spend a few weeks on, a few weeks off the island: if you get vertigo, don’t even try the climb; if you get overwhelmed by the height and steep drops, sit down and proceed on your tuchus.
Away we went. It’s a steady 20-minute climb up a narrow path of stone steps.
Near the end of the climb, there’s a saddle of near-flat green space between two prongs. More on that later.
The pictures above and below were taken from basically the same spot, one looking down, one looking up.
Eventually we reached the monastery, where another of the island’s caretakers gave us a brief talk about the dozen monks who lived there in beehive huts. There, on the edge of their known world, they subsisted on rabbits, puffins, and whatever vegetables they could grow.
I buttonholed one of the caretakers and peppered her with questions about the process of bringing a film crew for one of the world’s most coveted media properties to this edge of the earth. She told me that they shot for five days on the island, and the production hired mountaineers as porters who carried equipment from the landing site up to the monastery or wherever else it needed to go. All told, it took two weeks on either end to pack everything in and out.
We didn’t have much time on the island; our boat home left by noon, and that’s one boat you don’t want to miss, so we began the climb down. We did leave a few moments to capture an important picture:
Closest thing I had to a lightsaber was a Coke can. This is in the saddle seen above, and pretty darn close to exactly where Daisy Ridley was standing for the shot. Not bad for a guy who has basically avoided those flicks since seeing them in theaters!
By late morning the sun was out, and we had some beautiful views of Little Skellig, and the vast ocean.
Could have sworn I parked the X-Wing somewhere around here…
We made our way back to the boat and set off back to the mainland, leaving one of Ireland’s most magical places in our wake.
The views expressed here are mine alone (and I don’t even know that I’ll stick to them, if pressed). They should not be attributed to anybody else, including (but not limited to) my employer, employer’s clients, friends, family, or pets (current, former, or future).