The Living Mountain
by Nan Shepherd
A classic work of nature writing, written during the Second World War but left unpublished for three decades, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is a meditation upon the nature of mountains – in particular, the Cairngorms of the Highlands of Scotland – and a cult book among the hillwalking community.
Recommendations from our site
“The Living Mountain is her perspective of going out, using your body and all of your senses and moving in very particular ways—similar to what a mountaineer or rock climber does. She and Bonatti do similar things but have different approaches and techniques for accessing and understanding and engaging with the mountain. Her goal is to know the mountain in its entirety, the living mountain, and to bring that Zen Buddhist philosophy into a way of being or experiencing the Cairngorms. Which is so refreshing, and it’s important to have that perspective as an approach, it’s a brilliant balance.” Read more...
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Anna Fleming, Memoirist
“It’s a short, slim book, but it gives us more than most major books I’ve read on mountain landscapes and particularly the Cairngorms. It is spiritual, it’s emotional. There’s so much light in it. It dazzled me. And it still does when I re-read it, which I do often.” Read more...
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Annie Worsley, Memoirist
“Nan Shepherd walked, not on a linear journey, but over a lifetime. She went ‘into’ the mountains, not onto them, so a very different approach to the view that mountains are there to be climbed and conquered. She was probably quite an eccentric. She would swim naked, walk barefoot. She wanted to immerse herself in the landscape. She realised that striding out over the landscape for hours and hours was a liberating experience, even a metaphysical experience.” Read more...
Gail Simmons, Travel Writer
“This slim work of nature writing, an account of gentle and repeated interaction with those same mountains in all seasons, requires total immersion.” Read more...
Editors’ Picks: Highlights From a Year in Reading
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“This book is a geo-philosophical meditation on the Cairngorm landscape in particular, but more generally on how mind and place “interpenetrate”, as Shepherd puts it. It’s a sensual and, well, erotic text. Shepherd talks about “tasting the landscape”, and describes walking barefoot, sleeping out. It’s the record of a long-term and full-body immersion in a place.” Read more...
Robert Macfarlane, Literary Scholar
