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. Elise had first read Alexandra’s My Journey to Lhasa when she was 16. “The book opened my eyes to the incredible story of a woman exploring on her own and at a time when few people, let alone women, did so. Even though it is so short, Shepherd still manages to covey the sense of place, the beauty and the wildness of the Cairngorms with such amazing brevity. The prose is lyrical and poetic with an incredible eye for detail, as she describes the colours of the earth and heathers or the pure quality of the streams and rivers, or the luminosity of the light.

Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have merely gone out to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him. The long-time composer's debut folk album has exuberant and meditative moments. Bandcamp New & Notable May 5, 2023 go to album In the last months of the Second World War, a teacher called Anna ‘Nan’ Shepherd finished a short book about a place she had long loved: the Cairngorm mountains of north-east Scotland, a wild landscape of glens, peaks and storms. Walking in mist tests not only individual self-discipline, but the best sort of interplay between persons.” Tilda Swinton, the main narrator, is in thrall with each line of this story, bringing not only the writer to life but the writer’s own senses, the wonder, awe, texture, sounds, tastes and deep mysteries of the mountain Nan Shepherd discovers, lives with, all the days and nights of her life.

Broadcasts

Galileo Publishing - in the Cairngorms by Nan Shepherd -Foreword by Robert Macfarlane". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 . Retrieved 10 July 2014. In 1945, Nan wrote a part-memoir, part-field study of the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, although it was not published until 1977. Today, the book is described as “one of the finest books ever written on nature and landscape in Britain”.

At first glance, this seems like a deceptively simple and modest book: Nan Shepherd describes her experiences and explorations in the Cairgorm Mountains in northeastern Scotland, a region she has lived in for decades, in the first halve of the 20th century. The Cairgorms is in essence a huge granite plateau (one of the highest in Europe), with a few bulges, cut through by unsightly rivers, some lochs and especially overgrown with heather. All in all a very scanty landscape where the wind is the master.

Scottish cultural revival

I also found a new rhythm to my days and it was much slower than the modern world. I did not have a mobile phone or any modern technology and nor did I have a torch. Just candles and no convenience foods. Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your So vivid was this journey into the living mountain that I feel so much more relaxed after the book, as one would after a beautiful holiday immersed in nature. In the audiobook, Tilda Swinton reads the original writing by Nan Shepherd. Robert Macfarlane reads his section and Jeanette Winterson hers. All are easy to follow and clearly read. I have given the narration a four star rating. It is all very well done.