I had to grow older to appreciate my homeland.

Oct 14

“I’ll probably move away for a year”.

A woman sits near the cliff edge, looking out over the calm blue water, framed by green coastal foliage. — Overlooking Dublin Bay - Shot on Leica SL3

I was confident in that prediction. As a 21-year-old Dubliner, I couldn’t quite think of a future longer than a few months ahead, let alone more than a year. I was at a mini crossroads in my life at the time. I’d just broken up with a girlfriend, my first “real” job had made me and two-and-a-half thousand others redundant, and my parents had left the family home I grew up in and retired to the country.

I moved to Windsor in England. My brother was living there at the time, although he traveled frequently and for long spells with work. I spent large parts of that first year alone, settling into a new life, a new country, and a new friend group. By the time the first anniversary of my move had come around, my brother had announced that work was taking him to live in the US. On the surface, I felt as lost as when I arrived. I went back to Ireland.

I lasted three weeks.

I realized two things. It had taken me that year to feel settled in England. And three weeks were enough to know I never wanted to move back to Ireland.

Ireland changed fast after I left. In that first year alone, the Euro came in, the metric system replaced the old measures, new roads bypassed the towns I used to pass through, and immigration laws reshaped the country. With my parents gone from Dublin, it didn’t feel like home anymore.

That was 24 years ago. A quarter of a century.

Of course, so much has happened in that time for all of us. But something strange happened to me in June this year. On a trip to Dublin, where my mother is now living again, I took her car to Howth Head, a place I had visited countless times growing up, and walked a trail I had never been on before. Ever.

A weathered wooden bench overlooks the cliffs at Howth Head, with the Baily Lighthouse and the Irish Sea stretching into the distance. — A resting spot - Shot on Leica SL3

“So, what you’re telling me, Paul, is what changed for you is that you went home for a walk?”

Well, yes, kinda. I grew up going to this place in a car. Parking at an overlook with a view across Dublin Bay. Sitting there for a few minutes and leaving again. Whenever I went back and was playing tour guide, I just did the same thing. Never ventured on a walking trail. But on this trip, I craved the idea of walking alone with my camera. The scenery took on new life for me, but something that was, I thought, so familiar to me suddenly became new again. I fell in love. And I can’t say that I had ever been in love with Dublin before. I was like realizing the girl whose pigtails you keep pulling is actually the love of your life. You know it, but something needs to be revealed to make you see it for what it is.

Will I ever move back? Unlikely. Truth is, I am in love with other places too. Windsor will always hold a special place in my heart. London, New York. I’m so happy to be reacquainted with a love I never appreciated, and now I can.

That is also in no small part thanks to my love of photography, which has pushed me into things I wouldn’t have done.

Here are some shots from that day.

Thanks for reading

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