Sitemap

Member-only story

A Group Hiking Trip When One Person Is A Jerk

When one person decides to be a jerk on a group hiking tour, you have no choice but to deal with it

--

View from the summit of Diamond Hill, after our first day of hiking. Connemara, Ireland. © Carol Labuzzetta, 2024

Last fall, we took a dedicated hiking trip in Ireland. As our first foray to this small country, we planned to spend three days in Galway, followed by a seven-day hiking trip with Wilderness Ireland named Hiking Ireland Coast to Coast, ending with three days in Dublin.

The seven-day hiking trip was interesting. There were four couples and the guide. We were picked up in Galway on the first day. There, we met the other participants. There was a couple from the Boston area, another pair from Connecticut, my husband and I, and two women who were partners that were the same age as us, from the Southern Tier of New York. Our guide was Irish, from Sligo, but had only recently returned to the country after living in Greece.

Who’s Who

When we had lunch outside Galway, it was time to get to know one another. Everyone was highly educated. The couple who resided in Boston had spent years in Wisconsin near Madison. The man had worked at the University and was a chair of one of the STEM departments. Since moving to Boston, he told us he worked for Apple, Microsoft, and MIT. Nice — or so we thought. His wife was a retired school…

--

--

Carol Labuzzetta, MS
Carol Labuzzetta, MS

Written by Carol Labuzzetta, MS

I write about the environment, education, nature, and travel. Having two master's degrees, in nursing and environmental education, I am a teacher at heart.

Responses (4)