Finding peak happiness in nature’s wild places
Former management consultant Lesley Emin is taking full advantage of her scientific training in her current career as a mountain guide and walk leader here in Galway and in destinations across Europe. On a bracing climb in Beann Bán, she shares her story and her passion for geology, botany and orienteering with LORNA SIGGINS.
WALKING is one of the best forms of exercise, but it also a form of camouflage for something much more profound.
In the “production-oriented culture” in which so many of us live, “thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing”, according to north American writer, feminist and commentator Rebecca Solnit.
However, “doing nothing is hard to do”, she observes.
“It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking,” she says.
Perhaps that’s why mountain guide Lesley Emin is as enthused about a stroll along a stretch of her local coastline as she is about the many mountains she has tackled across Europe.
You sense that “bucket lists” might not be part of her vocabulary. And it might take an entire day spent out on a hill with her before she will allude to any of her many achievements.
Not for nothing did British academic and accomplished climber Terry Gifford ask her to come with him when he decided to tackle one of the most interesting rock climbs in Connemara.
The route was Carrot Ridge – so named by late mountaineer Joss Lynam after he took a novice climber up the daunting buttress, using a “carrot” approach to keep his partner from flagging.
Gifford described ascending a “marble staircase with little steps on its very left”, which was “designed by Michelangelo” as it reached into the clouds.
“When Lesley did her own thing, most things fell into place. Including lunch,” he wrote.
“The long day, route-finding and damp rock, built tensions that were immediately defused on belay ledges, where, at some point Lesley revealed a lavish lunch pack that only lacked the lobster sandwiches. . .”
Recalling her day with Gifford while on a walk up Benbaun or Beann Bán, Galway’s highest peak in the heart of the Twelve Bens, some months ago, Lesley makes light of it all.
Beguiling in the sunlight, Carrot Ridge across the valley from us had more than a hint of sulphur about it, and it was hard to believe that anyone could have much appetite for any sort of food while navigating its polished surface.
“Well, it was quite a long day, probably 12 hours,” Lesley laughs. When the pair eventually arrived down into Lough Inagh Lodge, the World Cup football final was underway.
“We were the only two people in the bar who hadn’t the slightest interest in watching the match!”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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