the bog

bog /bɒg, bɔg/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[bog, bawg] –noun

1.	wet, spongy ground with soil composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter.

Bog of Death [uphill and downhill] -noun
1. Sunday's hike.


I have found that the easiest (though very cliché) way to begin a speech, paper, toast, etc. about something that really has no easy beginning is to just Webster (or in this case, dictionary.com) it. There really is no easy way to describe Sunday's hike. It was either one of the best or worst times I've ever had hiking. At about 11:30 AM Sunday afternoon, when we had stopped after about 2 hours of hiking for a lunch break by this large rock (trying to somehow shield ourselves from the downpour of mist), and when I found out that we only hiked about 1/3 of the total distance, I would have easily chosen it as one of the worst times hiking. About an hour later, completely soaked due to the constant mist and steady faceplants and backslides down the muddy slopes of the Bog of Death, I looked over at my roommate Kym who was hiking with me. I must have looked completely miserable because she started laughing, which caused me to start laughing too and I realized that I still had like 2 more hours to go and I might as well just start having fun. So the rest of the hike wasn't actually too bad and then that night when I thought back on it I realized that it might have been one of the hardest hikes I've been on but that I definitely wanted to go back this Sunday for another one.

So what made the hike so hard? The fact that it was raining the entire time, therefore causing the bog we were hiking through to turn into a muddy, wet mountain, and therefore covering the entire mountain in a heavy mist so you had no idea what was more than about 20 feet in front of you. Kym, Johnny (2 of my roommates) and I were in a group of about 6 people. One of which was the group leader, equipped with a map and a compass. I have never been hiking before where there was no trail. At all. We just climbed up mountains (sometimes with all fours) and across mountains and down mountains, following after a guy with a compass, hoping he knew where he was going. All along the way, we were trying to not faceplant into bog water, grass, mud, thorns, and sheep poop. Except we all fell. A lot. Especially this one guy who didn't have on the right boots and tore his hiking pants completely open within like 1 hour of hiking, so he had to finish the last 4/5 hours of the hike with mostly just his boxers and one leg of a hiking pant. Johnny was wearing just his Sambas since he didn't have hiking boots here, so he too was having a hard time not falling when we were climbing down the Muddy Bog Mountain. It also didn't help anything that every hundred feet or so we'd come across a sheep skeleton or partial skeleton from an unlucky (or lucky depending on your view of the hike) sheep that died while on the mountain. Once we passed by this really deep boggy spot that would probably be over my head if I stepped into it and we saw this dead sheep floating inside down below. It'd probably been there for several years, preserved indefinitely inside the bog. At one spot in particular, at the top of the highest mountain, sheep skulls were everywhere. It kind of felt like the Elephant Graveyard in the Lion King. Only with sheep. By the time we finished the hike (I think in total it was about 14 kilometers?) I was so happy to be back on the bus, even though we all smelled kind of boggish.
Despite the whoa uncomfortableness of the hike, looking back it actually was a lot of fun. We had a really funny group who kept the moral high. Our group leader was Mr. Optimism and kept chatting away about how we, for example, only had 2 mountains or so left to hike. Also, the guy who ripped his pants open was really funny as well and kept cracking jokes the whole time. So, like I said earlier, I ended up having a good time and I am planning on going back next week.

---

Saturday was a big day too for rugby. Munster, the rugby team that Cork is affiliated with, had a big game against the London Wasps. We spent the entire day at the pub, first watching a big soccer game with Manchester United winning, and then watching the Munster game (Munster won). At the end of the ruby game, still not really having any idea how rugby was played, I came to 3 conclusions...


1. the ball can be kicked forward, but has to be tossed sideways or backwards
2. rugby players are the largest, most muscular people I've ever seen in my entire life
3. rugby fans are intense.