The first nine chapters detail Shepherd's exploration of the Cairngorms. Here she lovingly describes the plateaus, the air and light, the plant and animal life, the water and weather, and man's relation to the Cairngorms, historically and socially. The final few chapters did if for me, as Shepherd goes deep within herself to find her purpose in her external surroundings. Her prose turns philosophical, but also playful, as the final short chapters explore her purest feelings towards the mountains, embracing a strong spiritual connection to the land, a love that can barely be described analytically, only fully experienced. And a connection like that, I'd say is an example of purest living, an existence of love and respect to nature. Her prose also rings with the joy of being in the mountains: the pleasure of drinking deeply from the ‘strong white’ water of an upland stream, say, or the feel of lying on sun-baked granite on a summer evening. This focus on The Living Mountain tends to obscure the creative achievement of Shepherd’s three novels, The Quarry Wood (1928), The Weatherhouse (1930) and A Pass in the Grampians (1933), with their attention to rural communities under pressure from modernity. The essays are loosely themed (water, light, plants, sleep), meandering both physically and introspectively all over the Cairngorms and highlighting Shepherd's favorite sights, sensations, events. From the chapter on water:

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-22 07:17:15 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40334603 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier After reading the introduction by Robert MacFarlane, a renowned nature writer himself, I wasn’t sure I was going to really like this. I’m not particularly interested in Shepherd’s having been influenced by Buddhism, Taoism and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a contemporary of hers. However, in this book one can dig into the more intellectual/philosophical approach if wanted, or like me glance off the spots that don’t necessarily interest. I had spent nearly 20 years exploring them on foot and ski: winter-climbing in the gullies of their corries, camping out on the high tundra of their plateaux. But Shepherd’s prose showed me how little I really knew of the range. Its combination of intense scrutiny, deep familiarity and glittering imagery re-made my vision of these familiar hills. It taught me to see them, rather than just to look at them. Shepherd was a major contributor to early Scottish Modernist literature. Her first novel, The Quarry Wood (1928) has often been compared to Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, published four years later, as they both portray restricted, often tragic lives of women in Scotland at that time. [6] Her second novel, The Weatherhouse (1930), concerns interactions between people in a small Scottish community. [7] Her third and final novel, A Pass in the Grampians, appeared in 1933. [4]At the start of the book I failed to see what Nan was describing. I saw only that which I myself had experienced before. Give the book time. You get caught up in it. You come to understand where she is heading and what she is speaking about. Walking, rambling, on a hike, one gets an intimate sense of place. How? Through the use of all one’s senses piled together, and then….you get something more. A walker will know what I mean and will understand what Nan is saying.

Nan Shepherd believed that it was 'a grand thing to get leave to live.' She did this by spending every minute she could in her beloved Cairngorms. In her 88-years, she covered thousands of miles on foot and became minutely aware of the rhythms of these wild places.

Exploring conflicting worlds

Anna Shepherd (known as Nan) was born on 11 February 1893 at East Peterculter, and died in Aberdeen on 27 February 1981. Her father, John Shepherd, was a civil engineer, and her mother came from a family well established in Aberdeen. The family moved to Cults soon after she was born, and Shepherd lived in the same house there for most of the rest of her life. She went to Aberdeen High School for Girls, and studied at Aberdeen University, graduating with an MA in 1915. She then joined the staff of Aberdeen Training Centre for Teachers, (later the College of Education) and taught English literature there until her retirement in 1956 – by all accounts an inspiring teacher, with a feminist approach in her lectures which was ahead of her time. After retirement, she edited the Aberdeen University Review from 1957 until 1963; in 1964 the University awarded her an honorary doctorate. Around the time Virginia Woolf beheld the magnificent interleaving of every part of nature in the epiphany that made her an artist and before Rachel Carson made ecology a household word, Shepherd serenades the intricate ecosystem of the mountain: My hope was that it might change in some measure the ways we imagine the landscape of Essex, and of south-east England more generally. The programme was an hour long, but took almost a year in the field to film. Around the same time, ten latitude degrees north, Nan Shepherd (February 11, 1893–February 23, 1981) — another woman of immense literary talent and altitudinal ardor — was reverencing another mountain range and gleaning from it abiding wisdom on the art of living.

Light in Scotland has a quality I have not met elsewhere. It is luminous without being fierce, penetrating to immense distances with an effortless intensity. So on a clear day one looks without any sense of strain from Morven in Caithness to the Lammermuirs, and out past Ben Nevis to Morar. At midsummer, I have had to be persuaded I was not seeing further even than that. I could have sworn I saw a shape, distinct and blue, very clear and small, further off than any hill the chart recorded. The chart was against me, my companions were against me, I never saw it again. On a day like that, height goes to one’s head. Perhaps it was the lost Atlantis focused for a moment out of time. 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! I'm a bit embarrassed when I say that I haven't explored much of Scotland, my home country. The parts I have explored have been incredible. The Isle of Harris (Western Isles) is one of my most recent explorations of Scotland, and what a beautiful part of the world it is. The edgy and cragged land of greens and greys, the long, winding single roads on the twisted hills, the purest, clearest waters, a piece of land far from conventional settlements.Shepherd's short non-fiction book The Living Mountain, written in the 1940s, [9] reflects her experiences walking in the Cairngorm Mountains. She chose not to publish it until 1977, but it is now the book for which she is best known. [10] It has been quoted as an influence by prominent nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Joe Simpson. The Guardian called it "the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain". [11] Its functions as a memoir and field notes combine with metaphysical nature writing in the tradition of Thoreau or John Muir. [ citation needed] The 2011 Cannongate edition included a foreword by Robert Macfarlane and an afterword by Jeanette Winterson, [12] these were also included in the 2019 edition by the same publisher. [13] Annabel Abbs retraced Shepherd's steps through the Cairngorms for her book, Windswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Trailblazing Women ( Two Roads, 2021).

Nan Shepherd | Justin Marozzi | Slightly Foxed literary review". Slightly Foxed. 1 December 2018 . Retrieved 24 November 2019.

Broadcasts

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 ] If you read it, you too will feel changed. This is sublime, in the 18th-century sense, when landscapes like these were terrifying. And she achieves it in language that is almost incantatory, like a spell: "... birdsfoot trefoil, tormentil, blaeberry, the tiny genista, alpine lady's mantle ..." runs one short list of the local flora, and it was only on rereading that I realised I had never heard of one of these flowers before, or could tell what they looked like. Shepherd subsequently lectured for the Aberdeen College of Education. [4] She retired from teaching in 1956, but edited the Aberdeen University Review until 1963. The university awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1964. [5] She remained a friend and a supporter of other Scottish writers, including Neil M. Gunn, Marion Angus and Jessie Kesson.