The Living Mountain (Canons): A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland: 6

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The Cairngorms are a mountain range roughly in the middle of Scotland, it is can be a breathtaking beautiful part of the world, but in bad weather can be harsh, unforgiving and unrelenting. This was a part of the world that Shepherd loved and lived close to all her life. This slim book of essays is an account of Nan Shepherd's lifelong explorations of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. The Living Mountain is not a memoir (we learn little about Nan Shepherd beyond who she is when she's in the Cairngorms). Nor is it an adventure story filled with triumph and camaraderie and testosterone. It is perhaps described best as a love story between one person and a place. Up on the plateau nothing has moved for a long time. I have walked all day, and seen no one. I have heard no living sound. Once, in a solitary corrie, the rattle of a falling stone betrayed the passage of a line of stags. But up here, no movement, no voice. Man might be a thousand years away.'

Shepherd's writing conveys wonder in the face of these mountains because she was comfortable with uncertainty. Following the young River Dee, she notes,After reading the introduction by Robert MacFarlane, a renowned nature writer himself, I wasn’t sure I was going to really like this. I’m not particularly interested in Shepherd’s having been influenced by Buddhism, Taoism and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a contemporary of hers. However, in this book one can dig into the more intellectual/philosophical approach if wanted, or like me glance off the spots that don’t necessarily interest. That experience came to mind as I read Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain. Drafted in 1945, published in 1977, the slender book is a meditation on Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains, and a master class in listening to and seeing the landscape from someone who dedicated her life to being fully present in these mountains. Nan Shepherd is best known as the author of the The Quarry Wood, The Weatherhouse, and A Pass in the Grampians, novels which she wrote from 1928-1933. In Robert Macfarlane's sensitive introduction to The Living Mountain, he describes Shepherd's struggles with writing after that time. Those struggles make The Living Mountain even more precious, a beautifully written and observed account of Shepherd's beloved Cairngorms, based on a lifetime's worth of walks. As Macfarlane notes, "Reading The Living Mountain, your sight feels scattered – as though you’ve suddenly gained the compound eye of a dragonfly, seeing through a hundred different lenses at once. This multiplex effect is created by Shepherd’s refusal to privilege a single perspective."

The Living Mountain is a slim volume but it brilliantly allegorises the history of exploitation of colonised people and the natural environment, showing how greed and dreams of endless growth, ultimately precipitated the biggest crisis of our times. These chronicles of the subjugation of the Valley people, the exploitation of the Mahaparbat by the Anthropoi and eventually the Valley people or Varvaroi themselves joining the race to catch up, till things begin to fall apart, till avalanches and landslides begin to maim and kill, present a sharp and unmistakable rendition of the origins and prognosis of climate change. What both works show us is that a powerful part of the global cultural zeitgeist revolves around environmental concerns. In these stories, great mountains stand in the centre. Shepherd, Nan (2011). The living mountain: a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-0-85786-183-2. OCLC 778121107. Macfarlane, Robert (27 December 2013). "How Nan Shepherd remade my vision of the Cairngorms". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 24 November 2019.The story opens with the narrator and his online bookclub friend Maansi, two people who only interact on books and know little else of each other, discussing possible themes for the next year’s reading. Maansi proposes the ‘anthropocene’ a term both are unfamiliar with and volunteers to come up with a reading list. After some silence from her for a while, the narrator receives a message about a book she read on the theme being so very different from what she’d expected the ‘anthropocene’ to be, one which triggered off a tale, part dream, part memory of a story her grandmother had once told her, and it is this she shares with the narrator. As opposed to lyrical I found the prose far too literal. As opposed to poetic I found it sometimes nudging prosaic. There are many things that go into my rating a non fiction on Goodreads. Skill with the written word is most definitely a necessity if a book wants 3 star or higher out of me, but to get into the 4 and 5 star range a book has to offer more than fine writing and nice structure. It must make me feel something. And to be a 5 star, I must be feeling something pretty special. Shepherd's fiction brings out the sharp conflict between the demands of tradition and the pull of modernity, particularly in the nature of women's lives in the changing times. All three novels assign a major role to the landscape and weather in small northern Scottish communities they describe. [4] Poetry [ edit ]

But that was until someone from the people called the Anthropoi arrived, who coveted the treasures of the mountain, dubbed its people ‘credulous and benighted’ for not having taken them, colonised, enslaved and exploited, belittled their knowledge and practices, setting off a chain from which there could be no return. I loved how the author put forth the notion of the life-force, the spirit of the mountain (as a stand in for nature more broadly), which has been destroyed as a result of unthinking human intervention. I couldn’t help but think of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis here which too, explored this idea of animals losing their powers to talk and so on, and trees losing their spirit because of human intervention. Two friends, our unnamed narrator and his friend Maansi, while deciding on a theme for their book club for the year ahead stumble across the word ANTHROPOCENE- a term that is making waves and Maansi, in particular, is quite keen on. However, as the narrative progresses Maansi shares a vivid dream she has had that has left her more than a little unsettled. Her dream tells the story of Mahaparbat, the Great Mountain which shelters several warring villages that are settled in the Valley high in the Himalayas. Though life is not easy, the indigenous population lives under the protection of the Mountain enjoying the bounty of the natural resources that draw life and are nourished by the Mountain. The mountain is revered by the villagers, who sing and celebrate in its praise following the customs passed down by their ancestors. The binding rule was that those from the valley were not to set foot on the slopes of the Mahaparbat. Of all the natural resources available to the inhabitants of the Valley, The Magic Tree, whose wood, leaves, fruit and nuts each yield multiple uses, is particularly special. The nut attracts special attention and is in high demand for its multiple benefits. Trading Week, the annual trade and commerce between the Elderpeople of the Valley and those from the Lowlands, take place at the pass of the Mountain beyond which outsiders are not permitted. After a representative from a group of people who call themselves Anthropoi expresses curiosity and requests access to Great Mountain and is denied the same in keeping with the Law of the Valley, interests swiftly evolve into action on the part of the Anthropoi, who invade the Valley and take control over the inhabitants, their resources and the Great Mountain. The first nine chapters detail Shepherd's exploration of the Cairngorms. Here she lovingly describes the plateaus, the air and light, the plant and animal life, the water and weather, and man's relation to the Cairngorms, historically and socially. The final few chapters did if for me, as Shepherd goes deep within herself to find her purpose in her external surroundings. Her prose turns philosophical, but also playful, as the final short chapters explore her purest feelings towards the mountains, embracing a strong spiritual connection to the land, a love that can barely be described analytically, only fully experienced. And a connection like that, I'd say is an example of purest living, an existence of love and respect to nature. Nan Shepherd | Justin Marozzi | Slightly Foxed literary review". Slightly Foxed. 1 December 2018 . Retrieved 24 November 2019.However, this was no scientific or geological piece, although those disciplines had their place. This was a drawing together and fusion of her own knowledge and experience of the area, of her interest in spirituality and philosophy and literature and people annealed into a beautiful end product. She had a great economy and compression in the way she wrote, drawing out the essence of each of her very varied experiences of these mountains in a paragraph or two. This was one of the reasons for reading slowly and savouring the book. Read with any speed and you risked losing the richness and beauty of each sentence. Read one of her paragraphs with real attention to detail and you had a very vivid reflection of what the walking and climbing experience is like. The audiobook puts the introduction by Robert Macfarlane at the book’s end. He expresses how he interprets Nan’s lines. It is right to put the introduction at the book’s end! There is an additional follow-up essay by Jeanette Winterson. Here she expresses her thoughts on Nan’s writing. Both the introduction and the follow-up essay are extremely good. They add to the value of the book. They further open readers’ eyes to the wide scope of Nan’s writing.

The Living Mountain' is a fable for the voices unheard, the songs unsung & the dances that are forgotten from an era of humanity when indigenous cultures thrived living close to the rivers and mountains and forests of the world. Until the Age of Anthropocene was ushered bringing with it greed, discord & irreverence of the ancestral knowledge and way of living. Until these mountain people (who are now called Varvaroi) were enslaved and colonised by the new kind - Anthropoi for their selfish reasons: to ascend the slopes of the sacred mountain & to discover & take by force the riches that lie in the womb of Mahaparbat. What follows is a mad grab for riches and resources by both Anthropoi & Varvaroi resulting in near-catastrophic consequences.My favourite chapter was the one about Man in the Cairngorms. The various characters she sketched were a delight to read about. The final chapter, although very short, compressed all the layers of reflection, knowledge and experience, into something jewel-like, as she celebrated the holistic nature of her overall experience of those mountains, and the unending experiences and insights to be gained by concentration on the simplest of objects or happenings or from the landscape. The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006. In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy. Amitav Ghosh has written for many publications, including the Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and he has served on the juries of several international film festivals, including Locarno and Venice. He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy. A tiny book that can be read in an hour or two gives us content to mull over for months. Amitav Ghosh presents this magic for the readers through his no-nonsense, simple yet majestic craft Living Mountains.