https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-uvgkx-102ddc2
In this podcast episode (link above), I chat with Cormac Lynch, a Mountain Leader who has been hiking, rock climbing and mountaineering for over 25 years. He is a highly skilled member of the Dublin & Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team and owner of Fia Mountaineering.
We discuss his experiences growing up in Wicklow Town with a sense of adventure through reading and exploring his childhood playground that consisted of the Wicklow Mountains and the Irish Sea. We talk about the book he is writing around his personal odyssey ’32 Summits with 32 Friends’ about his experiences climbing the highest mountain in every county in Ireland, each one with a different friend. He tells us that early on in the project, while standing in a 4,000 year old passage grave listening to whispers of history echoing down through time, he came to realise that this project wasn’t about him, but about commemorating those who have gone before us, relationships with those in our lives today, and connections with the landscape in which we live and how we engage with one another.
He talks about bringing your ‘A’ game… and how the quality of informal learning is just as important as the quality of formal learning and translating informal learning experiences into valuable life skills is vital. He reminds us that when people give you well-meaning advice, you need to remember that it isn’t instruction and you can’t necessarily take the advice of strangers at face value. He also explains that a teacher just being good at their subject is not enough, they have to be good at teaching as well, and why curriculum and instruction is so important, because you have an incredible responsibility to NOT get it wrong.
We discuss how variety, and pursuing something with a little more bite in your professional worklife is not a bad thing at all. He attests from his own experience that valuable lifelong learning is gained through what he calls a ‘module’ career and how important volunteering is in not only a personal capacity but in a professional one as well. I encourage you to listen and learn.
Click HERE for Accessible Transcript
You can find out more about Fia Mountaineering here:
Engage - Inspire - Transform 