3#01 Steph McKenna: the award-winning mountain campaigner

Mountain Air

> Find galleries, blog posts and many more episodes at www.mountainairpodcast.uk

“I get excited about something and I say yes, and then I do it. And I enjoy doing it, so I keep doing it.”

Episode 3#01 of Mountain Air stars Steph McKenna, winner of the fabulously titled 2023 Fort William Festival “Scottish Youth Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture”.

Steph was caught unawares by the award (mainly because she had not idea she’d been nominated), but look into why she won and it’s hardly a surprise at all. Though only 22-years old, she has lent emotional support to those that need it volunteering and mentoring for her local charity Lochaber Hope, overseen positive changes for young people and helped them grow a sense of “camaraderie, place and purpose” in the Lochaber Youth Theatre, worked as a seasonal ranger for the John Muir Trust on the Nevis range, co-founded the Fort William Foxes (a mountain biking group focused on encouraging and empowering women riders), and even found time to gain a first-class degree in Psychology for which she wrote an award-winning final year dissertation entitled “An Interpretation of wild swimming in the Scottish Highlands. The relationship between flow, the therapeutic landscape and wellbeing”.

How does one achieve so many things by so young an age? Where does the energy to tirelessly help others come from? Which Lord of the Rings character did she pretend to be as a child? Can you ever run out of adventures in the Lochaber area? How does Utah compare to the West Highlands? Are you ever too young to be covered in mud or submerged in an icy river? What ties together carbon sequestration and the future of the highland water vole?

The answers to all these questions and more feature in this first episode of the third series of Mountain Air.

> Read more about Steph McKenna here: https://mountainfestival.co.uk/culture-awards/stephanie-mckenna-ya-2023/

[episode recorded on 10/03/23]

> Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

00:00 - Introduction

02:50 - Welcome, winning the Fort William Festival “Scottish Youth Award for Excellent in Mountain Culture” award… but not having a Fort William accent. Also, Utah.

08:38 - Volunteering and mentoring for Lochaber Hope, “teaching people that they have it in them to heal themselves”. Building a “garden of hope”. Using the landscape and green space.

14:37 - Lochaber Youth Theatre “a real sense of camaraderie, and place and purpose… and the positive changes in the kids involved… that made me want to study psychology”.

20:40 - Motivations for volunteer work: “I just get excited about something and I say yes, and then I do it. And I enjoy doing it, so I keep doing it … I just enjoy the vibrancy of meeting different people and opening up the dialogue about wellness”.

21:43 - It was Benjamin Franklin!

22:20 - Seasonal Ranger(ing) for the John Muir Trust on the Ben Nevis range. Spending days “absolutely covered in mud”. Sequestration. Water voles. Raptors.

28:38 - Mountain Biking, working with bikes and riding for pleasure - Fort William Foxes, “opening up a space for those just getting into biking, maybe being a little nervous, and just wanting to ride with some other ladies”.

33:30 - “It’s a little bit easier to be silly and embarrassed about some of the girly stuff… or simply beings scared… women’s spaces in the outdoors open up the conversation for women to be a bit goofier, or less formal, or just a bit gross!”.

35:00 - Pretending to be Frodo Baggins, with the dog.

36:20 - Discovering outdoor sports. Wild swimming (“I was always swimming in the river as a kid”), falling through ice.

39:00 - Hillwalking and mountaineering, an epic sunrise around Steall Falls. Ice climbing. Scotland as a “huge open space with limitless potential”.

43:10 - Greatest mountain memory: a childhood visit to the Steall Falls, remembered later in life.

45:35 - All the time, money, freedom… what do you do? Research into the effects of mountains on mental wellbeing.

47:25 - Gardening and putting the bumper back on the car.