The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland (Canons) Paperback – August 18, 2011

Beautiful reading

Classic. [kla-sik] Noun. — thick book clotted with agate font; thrilling as carrots racing to the finish line.When “The Living Mountain” was described to me as a “classic” I applied the above definition and kept away from it. Then I discovered the book had only 108 pages. It was by that sad standard I chose to buy it. Wrong criterion. Splendid decision.In this edition, the text is preceded by a twenty-five page Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. It is a separate gem, in no small part because of the multiple quotes from the forthcoming text.And then you are in it, as fully immersed in Nan Shepherd’s prose as she is in the mountain itself. On page eleven she strikes home her central message. She writes of the summits around her: “I knew when I had looked for a long time that I had hardly begun to see.” From that point on you are her guest working to see better the mountain and its world. In her company you will feel, touch, and see things previously beyond reach including walking through a cloud, an experience few people likely even consider.In a chapter on Light and Air, you will confront the power of shadows to cast “an etching” of grass “distinct and black, a miracle of exact detail.”Shepherd is no mountain idolator. “Life has not much margin here,” she says. “Work goes on from dark to dark.” Yet in her deep and careful persistence, she proves an enveloping champion. “Whether you give it conscious thought or not,” she writes, “you are touching life, and something within you knows it.” Even from a distance of several decades and the interposition of the printed page, I also knew I was touching a living mountain. An exceptionally fine reading experience.

I love this book, and I’m puzzled by some of the low starring reviewers irritated by the fact that it isn’t a travel guide to the Cairngorms. It is, as the author writes, “a tale of my traffic with a mountain.” It’s a 108 page meditation on encounter, and as others here testify, it’s extraordinarily beautiful. I only have two complaints, and neither of them have anything to do with Nan Shepherd’s writing. First, Robert Macfarlane’s ponderous introduction nearly drove me away from the book with horsewhips and clouds of biting flies before I had ever reached a single word of the author’s own gracious prose. Also, I can’t tell you how irrationally bothered I am by the fact that my Canongate edition has a photograph of an American pronghorn antelope on the cover. Love the animal, but it doesn’t belong here. I guess someone thought any four-legged thing standing in the snow would do.

If you want high adventure, so watch a Starwars movie. This is a lovely book about a woman's relationship with a mountain and nature. A gentle read that is heartwarming, especially in a time when we are slaves to our electronics and busy schedules. Highly recommended.

This reviewer has spent years exploring the Cairngorm mountains in the Highlands of Scotland. What a pleasure to find an author with the skill to describe the experience of knowing these mountains in all their glory. The author was a native of northeast Scotland, and spent an active lifetime exploring the Cairngorms, especially the high and ancient plateau at the roof of Scotland. That plateau, and this book, are a feast for the mind and the senses.This is a short book, but it pays the reader to take his or her time reading it. Appreciate the author's love for her mountains in all seasons, and for the people who live there. Take the time to read the introduction and afterword, to better know the author herself. Very well recommended.

Ms Shepherd can really write, and this is the culmination of a lifetime wandering the Cairngorms. A long lovely prayer to a great mountain range, and after writing it, she sat it aside for 30 years to age, like a fine Single Malt Whiskey. And by the way, some of the worlds finest Single Malt's are made in, or immediately adjacent to the Cairngorms. And the water she write of so beautifully that flows out of the Cairngorms, goes into those great Scotch's. A great book to read to someone you love on one of those night's when the Moon, or the Demon's, interrupt sleep.

Shepherd gives us a small volume that reads large. She contrasts her experiences in the Cairngorms with those of climbers intent on conquering the peaks. She describes her lifetime of walks as going "into" the mountain, and finding there joy, mystery and being.I will return to this slim volume again.