Climbing Brandon: Science and Faith on Ireland’s Holy Mountain, by Chet Raymo (New York : Walker and Company, 2004)
Mount Brandon, on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, is considered a holy place. Each year, thousands of pilgrims climb its peak seeking spiritual inspiration. In Climbing Brandon, Chet Raymo guides readers up the mountain he’s climbed, “perhaps, a hundred times,” sharing the human, natural, and spiritual histories of the peak, while meditating on the meeting of science and religion.
The westernmost of Ireland’s peaks is cloud-capped Mount Brandon, lifting its summit 3,127 feet into the wet Atlantic air. The Gaelic language is still spoken on its flanks, and its glens have a scraggy wildness that makes hell or Connacht seem civilized by comparison. The mountain’s black hump rises from rocky fields and gray water near the end of the Dingle Peninsula. It is not the highest mountain in Ireland; that distinction – by a few begrudged feet – belongs to Carrantuohill on the Iveragh Peninsula across Dingle Bay. But Carrantuohill stands among a cluster of high peaks, collectively called the Macgillicuddy Reeks, and its lofty precedence is somewhat disguised by company. Brandon lords it alone over a narrow thumb of land jutting into the sea, and its solitary prominence more than makes up for its somewhat lesser height. Except for a few recent plantations of evergreens at low altitudes, the sides and summit of the mountain are treeless. Experienced walkers are pretty much free to ramble wherever they please, but neophytes best keep to well-trodden paths lest they go astray in mist. – from Climbing Brandon: Science and Faith on Ireland’s Holy Mountain, by Chet Raymo
