Seán Lysaght has more streams to follow, mountains to walk

We sit beneath a tower of treasured leather-bound volumes in Seán Lysaght’s writing room. So many books. “Why another?” I ask.
“You know, there isn’t a big library of books about North Mayo. We have things like Ashworth’s ‘The Saxon in Ireland’, that talks about Mayo, and you have Cesar Otway, he has written about Erris and Tyrawley in one of his books, and you’ve got, let’s say, WH Maxwell, but it’s quite a small collection really. Part of my ambition would be that Wild Nephin would join that little set of books, that it would be there in the future as an account of North Mayo.”
“Your home was in Limerick. How did you come to discover this part of the country?”
He tells me he relocated to Mayo in 1994, when they were setting up the Regional Technical College in Castlebar.
“We moved to Westport, but Jessica and I had traveled around Mayo just a few months before a particular job was advertised. We had driven from Sligo to Westport across the bog of Erris and down along the coast towards Mulranny and were very taken with the scenery, so that planted a little seed.
“I got the job, and from then on it was a case of gradually getting to know that part of the world, especially when I had more time in recent years.”
“What motivated you to go exploring up there?” I asked.
“I’d been reading the work of Robert Lloyd Praeger, who was very taken with the whole west of Ireland but had a particular appetite for places that hadn’t yet been discovered. Parts of Kerry, Connemara and Donegal were pretty well known, but in parts of the west, particularly in Connacht, there were areas that had scarcely been explored by tourists or botanists or geologists, and Preager found virgin territory there. You might say I was following a similar impulse.
“Preager does mention Erris, and did walk the hills of north Mayo, but left a fairly scant record, so there was a lot that hadn’t really been written about, or sketched, or otherwise reported on by other people. That left a great sense of new discovery about the place.”
Then came the National Park in Ballycroy. Did that influence what he was doing?
“I’m not sure the National Park thing had a huge impact on me at the beginning. When it was established we got to know some of the people involved, and they became dear friends to us. That certainly helped us to become anchored in a place.
“There wasn’t much visible change in the Nephin area in the beginning of the National Park other than a few signs that let us know we were in it. It’s only now, I think, with the visitor centre at Ballycroy and with various developments on the Letterkeen side, with the handover from Coillte that we are beginning to see development with the bothies and new trails… it’s taken time for that to happen.”
Since the publication of Wild Nephin, the name of the National Park has changed to the Wild Nephin National park. Was that coincidence? Or did Seán know the name was to change?’
He laughs. “I had no inside information at all. Bill Murphy of Coillte had a vision for the future and proposed a Wild Nephin wilderness area. Only part of that was the National Park. Another was the Coillte land in what is now the Nephin Forest, which extends from Letterkeen to Birreencorragh in the east, around Mount Eagle and to Altnabrocky on the eastern side of Corslieve mountain.”
He accepts that people will now associate his book firmly with the Wild Nephin National Park. ‘I guess that’s inevitable,” he says. “There was some friction when the name of the park was changed, but one thing noticed recently is that the people behind the Dark Skies initiative have done a very good job in getting support from the community in Ballycroy. There have been a number of initiatives such as the beautiful piece of quilting that the Ballycroy woman’s group did, which is on display in the visitor centre.
“Those sort of things show that the local people are identifying with the National Park. This link between the community centre and the visitor centre will grow if the proposed planetarium is developed.”

Sea eagles and lakes
Obviously, there was a lot of footwork involved in preparing the Wild Nephin manuscript. How long did it take to gather all the information?
“It came in two stages really. The book looks back at the time I spent here fishing and exploring and so forth, but in compiling it I came to realise there were parts of the wild Nephin area that I didn’t know and hadn’t explored, so I felt the need to do extra walks in the southern and eastern parts, to walk as far as Altanbrocky and to explore the burial chamber under Ben Gorm, which Michael Chambers discovered some years ago. That did necessitate an extra round of walks, although I already had a familiarity with the western areas, particularly the Owenduff and Tarsaghaun rivers.’
Jessica, Seán’s wife, accompanied him on many of his treks.
‘It’s nice to have company. I don’t see myself as the lone white male charging off into the distance the whole time. The exploration of nature is something companionate. It’s nice to show something or to be shown, or when there’s a little quip or observation to share.
“Jessica and I were in one section of the Nephin forest this summer. We stepped off the track, looking across a lake. Jessica took the binoculars and said ‘There’s a sea eagle, it’s got a big yellow bill.
“I didn’t believe her but sure enough, she handed me the binoculars and there it was, perched on a lodgepole pine just beside the lake. Four eyes are definitely better than two. You see things, show things, someone else shows something.”
Sean’s explorations of the area have yielded many fond memories, but one stands out for him in particular.
‘Before Wild Nephin I had written a book about wild eagle territories in Mayo. One morning I was on the slope of Buckoogh when a bird came across the slope then pitched over the horizon ahead of me. This eagle reappeared and floated off over the plantation and down the Skerdagh valley. It did another loop back up and flew away toward lough Beltra. That was one of the greatest encounters I’ve had in the Nephins, with any wild creature.’

More to write
With his Wild Nephin book now available in paperback, what milestone is he aiming for next?’
“I’ve published several books of poetry, and after the initial surge of excitement with Wild Nephin died down I’ve felt the need to spend more time with this. I do think there’s at least one more book that could be written about the Nephin area, and that is certainly an option. I have a few notes made after longer walks, and other material that didn’t find it’s way into Wild Nephin.
“There’s always a feeling there’s a lot more to write. There are portions of the landscape, streams yet to follow, sides of mountains to climb. Preager told about his own excursions being as a little spider line, and how there was a great deal of land he never managed to explore. You can only cover so much in such a vast area.
“There is something developing up there with the growth of trees, and hopefully, in the future, with the reduction in grazing pressure. The natural landscape is never static. We have species dying out and other species moving in.”
Seán is hopeful the sea eagle will settle in the Nephin area; they are already regular visitors. He notes that there are red squirrels nearby too, while goshawk, which are settling in other parts of the country, would be another fine bird to have resident.
What of the future, when native forest is becoming more dominant and the area as a whole is rewilding itself – does Seán think we could we see species like lynx in this part of the world?
“That might be a step too far. Even with the reintroduction of golden eagles in the northwest and sea eagles in the west of Ireland, there have been issues with persecution. I’d like to see these birds become secure. I don’t believe its feasible to introduce apex predators such as lynx that are known to prey on livestock.
“The idea is floated occasionally by ecologists, but I don’t think it is the time for such a step. It would require a very different land management regime. The economy is currently geared to grazing by sheep.”

What’s to see?
To anyone yet to explore the Nephin Wilderness, Seán has practical word’s of encouragement.
“Get yourself a map, some good walking gear. There are some fine trails up there, great access points, hard forest tracks. A map is necessary – it is an area where you could get lost, although signage is good.”
I suggest people might also find a good book on the area, at which Sean laughs.
“It’s a matter of getting out there and developing a curiosity. We have an unusual coniferous forest in the greater Nephin range. We already have birds like crossbills, siskins and jays, now woodpeckers too, and the very real possibility of sighting one our golden or sea eagles will only increase with time.”
Have there been other notable discoveries?
“Ivy-leaved bellflower is widespread along the rivers, where it will light your way in summer. I enjoyed discovering some of the old sheepfolds and livestock pens, old stone enclosures going back to the 18th century or even from the early days of booleying in those areas. These are fine monuments to the labour of the people who went into those glens hundreds of years ago.
“It’s barely imaginable, when you go to these places and see traces of earthen huts, how people were able to live on potatoes and cabbage, with maybe the milk of a cow or a few goats, scratching some kind of meagre existence in the bog of Mayo. There’s a whole architecture of levees along the rivers built to protect small garden plots and homes from flooding. There’s a story there that deserves more investigation by historians and archaeologists.”
“So, you’re not done with north Mayo yet?,” I quip.
“No, as long as my legs will take me I’ll be going back. You never know what you might see up there. There’s always something to explore.”
This winter, a good book will whet our appetite for longer, kinder days, when we have opportunity to follow the footsteps of Ashworth, Otway, Maxwell, Preager and now Sean Lysaght in exploring one of the last remaining wilderness areas this country has to offer.

• ‘Wild Nephin’, by Seán Lysaght, is now available in paperback from bookstores.