A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
Hardcover, 176 pages
English language
Published Sept. 30, 2019 by Canongate Books.
'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian In this masterpiece of nature writing Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense poetic prose explores and records the rocks rivers creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.
'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian In this masterpiece of nature writing Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense poetic prose explores and records the rocks rivers creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.
No word is wasted in The Living Mountain. It is a book that begs to be re-read, and having just re-read it, I immediately want to start all over again. Her poetic words, her broadness and her precision in writing about the mountains that she loves so dearly come together in a perfect book. I love every word.
