Shepherd's eureka moment comes when she concludes that there is an "inner" mountain as well as the much more distracting outer one. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Charmed Life arrives in an explosion of magic in this edition illustrated by Alison Bryant and introduced by Katherine Rundell.

Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes, should so profoundly tranquillise the mind I do not know. It would be merely fanciful to suppose that some spirit or emanation of the mountain had intention in thus absorbing my consciousness, so as to reveal itself to a naked apprehension difficult otherwise to obtain. Written during the Second World War, it took another 30 years for The Living Mountain book to be published, but today Nan Shepherd’s novel is considered one of the greatest pieces of mountain literature ever written. But a slim volume of 35 pages cannot be treated in the same manner as a longer work, and a fable – by definition – has little to do with things like character development, or showing the decisions of normal people in extraordinary circumstances, as a novel would. This is something of a lost nature classic that has been championed by Robert Macfarlane (who contributes a 25-page introduction to this Canongate edition).The Scottish landscape and weather played a major role in her novels and were the focus of her poetry. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. 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.

Nan Shepherd travelled to countries around the world and yet it was the Cairngorms that endlessly inspired her and captured her imagination. This book is the final convincing factor in sending me to re-read and enjoy the richness of the best.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

The book is published alongside the music composition ‘The Living Mountain’ written by Thomas Larcher as composer-in-residence at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (2019-2020). For some people, reading so much description might be akin to reading poetry---requiring more attention to the page because there is no plot, little dialogue, and absolutely no suspense. In these pure and terrible streams the rain, cloud and snow of the high Cairngorms are drained away. Strang has exhibited around the UK and abroad, including the Royal Scottish Academy, Gallery One, Berlin and Corte Real Gallery, Portugal.Working in watercolour, Strang depicts flora, fauna and vistas across the seasons and in changing light. One of its interesting elements is how closely it links to similar cultural themes emerging from other parts of the world. I loved each description of beautiful metallic green colors, the transparency or glimmer of water in each little loch and pond and waterfall, the changing soundscape of the howling swirl of the winds, and the shades of sunlight against the rocks. Para ella la montaña con todos sus elementos: árboles, pájaros, animales, microclimas, sol, luna, ríos, arrollos, flores, nubes, etc, etc, incluyéndose a ella misma, era un todo, un conjunto casi indivisible.

Her ace card is her capacity to lead the reader by the hand through the stunning Scottish Cairngorm ranges, walking together with her as an experienced and well seasoned guide along the marshy tracks, along the heathen plateaus and through the disorienting mist, seeing this magic world through her wide eyes that seem to take in every macro and micro detail. The chapters are titled according to different sensory perceptions, in Light and Air, she describes how ‘the mountain world, like the desert world, is filled with mirages: tricks of light and perspective…. She wrote The Living Mountain in the last years of The Second World War - and then it was put away in a drawer for 40 years. Nan Shepherd logged decades in Scotland's Cairngorms, a mountain range in that country's northeast, and wrote a book about her relationship with those mountains in the 1940s.Quite the result for a book that had sat, quietly in a drawer, for more than three decades after Shepherd wrote it. I am a Naturalist (not a Naturist which are the type that run around nude, holding hands and giggling on blankets in the sun), but a Naturalist.