"In a world of self-help, this is true inspiration, deeply admirable without the distance of heroism, bracing without stridency and, ultimately, generous. The mountain, Shepherd tells us, is 'a corrective of glib assessment.' So is its book." --The New York Times Book Review
An internationally bestselling classic on the power of the natural world--"part memoir, part field notebook, part lyrical meditation on nature and our relationship with it, evocative of Rachel Carson and Henry Beston and John Muir" ( Maria Popova, The New York Times).
This masterpiece of nature writing by Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into "the high and holy places" of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world of spectacular cliffs, deep silences, and lakes so clear that they cannot be imagined. As she walks through clouds, endures blizzards, and watches the great spirals of eagles in flight, Shepherd comes to know something about the hidden life of this remarkable landscape--and also herself.
The Living Mountain is the result of one woman's lifetime spent in search of the essential nature of the wild world around her. Composed during World War II, Shepherd's manuscript lay untouched for almost four decades, nearly lost to time, before it was finally published. In the decades since, audiences and critics of all generations have embraced it as a classic, an enduring testament to the magnificence of mountains and our communion with the environment.
Review Quotes:
"This is true inspiration, deeply admirable without the distance of heroism, bracing without stridency and, ultimately, generous. The mountain, Shepherd tells us, is 'a corrective of glib assessment.' So is [this] book." --The New York Times
"A classic of nature writing for good reason." --The Washington Post
"A treasure both as a piece of nature writing about the United Kingdom and as a record of Shepherd's almost mystical relationship with the landscape . . . Her reflections emerge from unbounded curiosity paired with deep knowledge of the place and its rhythms. Shepherd is a humble but knowledgeable guide, often looking at a familiar peak or loch for so long that she sees it anew." --The Atlantic
"A masterpiece of Scottish writing. " --The Observer
"The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain." --The Guardian
"Abounding in clean, sharp, profound descriptions of phenomena both interior and exterior, Shepherd's narrative is a marvel of economy . . . Her prose is fresh and apt." --Wall Street Journal
"An arcane book of wonders, tuned by a poet's ear--and, like Mary Poppins' handbag, inexhaustible... The Living Mountain is not so much a book as an incantation...This is why Nan Shepherd belongs on that £5 note. She reminds us of what sustains us from the inside, when the road of self runs out and all else falls away but connection itself." --John Long, Summit Journal
"A masterpiece . . . Amongst the greatest works of nature writing to come out of Britain." --The Scotsman
"If you read it, you too will feel changed. This is sublime . . . And she achieves it in language that is almost incantatory, like a spell." --Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
"In this expanded American edition, long shelved by its author, Shepherd's perspective, which prioritizes sensory observations over geological particulars, loses none of its resonance. There's no denying that Shepherd's prose reaches considerable heights. An ode to a mountain range's mysteries proves timeless." --Kirkus Reviews
"With a framing introduction by Robert Macfarlane...and an afterword by Jenny Odell...this edition gives The Living Mountain the platform it deserves. This is not just a book about place--it is a book that is place. It remains as vital as the mountains themselves, urging us to look more closely. To listen more deeply. To move through the world with the same quiet reverence that Shepherd once did." --The Conversation
"[A] forgotten masterpiece about our relationship with nature . . . Shepherd does for the mountain what Rachel Carson did for the ocean--both women explore entire worlds previously mapped only by men and mostly through the lens of conquest rather than contemplation; both bring to their subject a naturalist's rigor and a poet's reverence, gleaming from the splendor of facts a larger meditation on meaning." --Maria Popova, The Marginalian
"Reading [ The Living Mountain] seems to me to explain why reading is so important. And odd. And necessary. And not like anything else." --Jeanette Winterson
Table of Contents:
Map of the Cairngorm Plateau -- Introduction / Robert Macfarlane -- Foreword by the author -- 1. The Plateau -- 2. The Recesses -- 3. The Group -- 4. Water -- 5. Frost and Snow -- 6. Air and Light -- 7. Life: The Plants -- 8. Life: Birds, Animals, Insects -- 9. Life: Man -- 10. Sleep -- 11. The Senses -- 12. Being -- Glossary.
Anna (Nan) Shepherd was born in 1893 and died in 1981. Closely attached to Aberdeen and her native Deeside, she graduated from her home university in 1915 and for the next forty-one years worked as a lecturer in English. An enthusiastic gardener and hill-walker, she made many visits to the Cairngorms with students and friends. She also travelled further afield - to Norway, France, Italy, Greece and South Africa - but always returned to the house where she was raised and where she lived almost all of her adult life, in the village of West Cults, three miles from Aberdeen on North Deeside.
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He lives in Cambridge with his family.
Scribner Book Company
Pub Date: March 18, 2025
0.6" H x 7.9" L x 5.1" W
176 pages
paperback
