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A review by bookphenomena_micky
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
5.0
This is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read and as a mainly fiction reader it feels strange to be saying that about a piece of non-fiction. Nan Shepherd truly transports the reader to the Cairngorm range so that you see, hear, feel, taste and touch the land, rocks, water, flora and fauna. As a lover of the Scottish hills and nature, having spent so much time there, I sensed everything she spoke of like a movie playing in my mind; I never could have articulated it in they way she did. Her words spoke to my soul, so I'm going to share some of my favourite lines. Written in the 1940s, this book is timeless.
"Light in Scotland has a quality I have not met elsewhere. It is luminous without being fierce, penetrating to immense distances with an effortless intensity."
"Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him."
"The sound of all this moving water is as integral to the mountain as pollen is to the flower. One hears it without listening as one breathes without thinking."
"For as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain's life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire."
My husband has been telling me to read this for over a decade, he was right that I would love it so completely. To read it in the Folio Society format was a special experience, no less because I adored the art by Rosie Strang that accompanied the piece.
Highly recommended to Scotland, mountain and nature lovers alike.
"Light in Scotland has a quality I have not met elsewhere. It is luminous without being fierce, penetrating to immense distances with an effortless intensity."
"Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him."
"The sound of all this moving water is as integral to the mountain as pollen is to the flower. One hears it without listening as one breathes without thinking."
"For as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain's life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire."
My husband has been telling me to read this for over a decade, he was right that I would love it so completely. To read it in the Folio Society format was a special experience, no less because I adored the art by Rosie Strang that accompanied the piece.
Highly recommended to Scotland, mountain and nature lovers alike.