The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland (The Grampian Quartet Book 4)

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That is not to say that you, whomever is reading this review, would feel the same way. You, who is an individual in your own right, who sees nature in your unique way and who reacts to prose work with distinctly differing reflections.

My favourite chapter was the one about Man in the Cairngorms. The various characters she sketched were a delight to read about. The final chapter, although very short, compressed all the layers of reflection, knowledge and experience, into something jewel-like, as she celebrated the holistic nature of her overall experience of those mountains, and the unending experiences and insights to be gained by concentration on the simplest of objects or happenings or from the landscape. The Living Mountain is an audio-visual performance inspired by Nan Shepherd's celebrated book of the same name. The project explores Nan's writing, the Cairngorm mountain range and human connections with the wild through lyrical, melodic and visual interpretation. Visuals are curated by Shona Thomson and feature stunning imagery from Scotland: The Big Picture, filmmaker Robyn Spice and 1940s archive film from National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive. The meditative experience of the combined audio and imagery are a soothing and poignant exploration of what it means to connect with a landscape and to find a sense of place. The Living Mountain album was recorded and produced by Andy Bell of Hudson Records (Furrow Collective, Northern Flyway, Jon Boden) at Clashnettie Arts Centre in the Cairngorm National Park. It was released on CD/LP/DL in 2020. Heel fijn onthaastend boek om te lezen, prachtig geschreven vol liefde voor de bergen van de Cairngorms, waar ze in een dorpje aan de voet ervan, haar hele leven heeft gewoond. Zo subtiel in al haar waarnemingen, heel herkenbaar, het brengt al die keren in mijn leven dat ik liep in de Schotse bergen terug. Het is er zó mooi!

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Shepherd, born Anna and self-christened Nan, was only an adolescent when she discovered her dual calling to literature and altitude. She roamed the Highlands of her native Scotland as zealously as she copied passages of the books she was devouring — novels, poetry, philosophy — into her commonplace book. By her twenties, she was writing original works of her own. Nan Shepherd Shepherd was a keen hill-walker. Her poetry expresses her love for the mountainous Grampian landscape. While a student at university, Shepherd wrote poems for the student magazine, Alma Mater, but not until 1934 was a collection of her poetry, In the Cairngorms, published. [5] This was reissued in April 2014 by Galileo Publishers, Cambridge, with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane. [8] Non-fiction [ edit ]

It is a short book, originally written during the Second World War, containing 12 chapters centred around aspects of the mountain range. She writes about the quality of the light up in the mountains, the water, how the landscape changes when it snows. There are chapters on the plants that scratch out a living and the animals and birds, in particular the eagle, and even though it is a harsh place the impact that man still has had.

This was gorgeous, short, and profound. It's like a long prose poem, based on numerous trips into the mountains. She’s an incredibly inspiring figure, and an unusual one, in the sense of being a woman writing about mountains and the wilderness and nature,” he said. “She found her own path in life and in literature, and it feels like she’s so far ahead of us – we’re always only starting to catch Nan up. Philosophically and stylistically, she was extraordinary.” Sensual is one of the words Macfarlane uses to describe Shepherd’s work. She herself wrote that she found “a joyous release” in walking and climbing, often toiling through foul weather. The Living Mountain begins with the observation: “Summer on the high plateau can be as sweet as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature.” But while reading it, they are – because of the power of the surrounding writing – fleetingly visible. Does that sound like nonsense? I hope not. (And I will fight anyone who says this book is nonsense. It's common sense, cubed.) The book is in 12 sections, each of which explores an aspect of the Cairngorms and life on them: "Water, Frost and Snow", "The Recesses", "The Senses", "Man", "Being". Reading the book, you realise that these apparently separate sections are bound laterally to each other by rhymes of colour, thought and word, so that they form a transverse weave. In this way, too, the book's form acts out its central proposition, which is that the world will not fall into divisible realms, as an apple may be sliced, but is instead a meshwork of interrelations. "So there I lie on the plateau," writes Shepherd.