By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — “A Night at the Explorers Club” unfolded Thursday at Westport Library, and the audience heard from seven people with exceptional perseverance, dedication and passion for challenging themselves to achieve remarkable — sometimes unimaginable — feats.

The audience of about 100 was introduced to Lhakpa Sherpa, a woman mistreated in her youth but who has since climbed Mount Everest more times of any woman in the world. The subject of “Mountain Queen,” a Netflix documentary and Hartford resident, Sherpa said she wants “to touch every mountain in the 50 states.”

Richard Wiese, of Weston, the program moderator and president emeritus of the Explorers Club, asked Sherpa about her source of courage for climbing such a dangerous peak so many times.

“The mountains are my friend … my childhood friend,” she said.

Another story of remarkable courage and perseverance was told by Morad Tahbaz, co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, who was charged with spying and held captive in an Iranian prison for five years. During that period, the conservationist searched for animal shapes he detected in the stone walls of his cell, eventually making more than 100 detailed drawings of animals using only a pen.

While imprisoned, Tahbaz endured beatings and solitary confinement until being released as part of a prisoner exchange in September 2023. 

“You’re living on hope,” he said. He attributed his survival to “compartmentalizing the bad things and thinking about good things,” as well as creating the meticulous cell drawings.

An important part of the explorer experience is storytelling, verbally and sometimes through art, according to Wiese, who has numerous explorer credits himself. They include cross-country skiing to the North Pole, tagging jaguars in the Yucatan jungles and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro several times, including the first time at age 11.

Another speaker, James Prosek, of Easton, is an explorer of a different kind — he has traveled around the world researching and drawing plants and animals, particularly fish. 

“In nature there are no boundaries,” he said. An artist, writer and naturalist, Prosek is the author of “Trout of the World” and “Trout, an Illustrated History.” 

Rounding out the speakers for the evening were documentary filmmaker Brendan Hall, the cinematographer for a 2023 documentary, “Out There: A National Parks Story,” and Rebecca Hui, an entrepreneur who founded Roots Studio, a fashion company that preserves the designs of indigenous cultures around the globe. 

Appearing virtually was Nina Lanza, principal investigator on the Mars Rover’s ChemCam, who has dedicated her career to finding life elsewhere in the solar system. 

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.