What a breath of fresh air! Nan Shepherd takes us to the Highlands, more precisely to the Cairngorms in the north-east of Scotland, a mountainous region to which she had a true cult. Here we are immersed in wild, untouched nature, which she details with the precision of an entomologist. Beyond the discovery of a mountain range, it is also the discovery of a woman in love with wide open spaces that this story offers us.
A teacher in Aberdeen, Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) wrote her book on the Cairngorms at the end of the Second World War but could not find a publisher. His work remained in drawers until 1977, finally being published on that date by Aberdeen University Press. It must be said that these 1970s were marked by the public’s growing interest in nature writers (the phenomenon nature writing). It was in 1977, in fact, that Bruce Chatwin published In Patagonia or what luck Not Alaska by John McPhee. It is the following year that will be published The snow leopard, famous book by Peter Matthiessen. But we had to wait a few more years before Nan Shepherd’s book was published in France: in 2019 by Christian Bourgois and now in pocket format.
Nan Shepherd tells us about a mountainous area that has not yet been contaminated by modernity and the leisure industry. She tells us all about her osmosis with this natural environment which never ceases to amaze her during her long-distance walks (alone but often also in groups) punctuated by bivouacs and nights under the stars. A nature with which you must, however, know how to deal with because fog banks can in a few minutes disrupt (sometimes seriously) the journey towards the summits or towards the lochs. We are at an altitude of more than 1200 meters (the highest point is Ben Mac Dhui) in a world flowing with water from all sides. She repeatedly mentions these “streams of water that fall from the plateau”. They are “clear,” she tells us. “In fact, the Avon has become synonymous with clarity. In contemplating its depths, we lose the sense of time, like the monk in the ancient tale who listens to the blackbird.”
Here she is, another time, in one of those “nooks” that she likes, near an “exceptional” loch, Coire an Lochain. “This loch derives its power from its inaccessibility,” she writes, “silence belongs to it. If jeeps find it, or a funicular defaces it, part of its meaning will disappear. The good of the greatest number has no place here.”
A regionalist work?
For Robert Macfarlane who prefaces this book, “it is essential that The living mountain be understood as a regionalist work in its broadest sense. In the last century, the term had taken on a pejorative connotation. The preface laments this, quoting the great Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh for whom “the regional is the universal. It deals with the fundamental”, meaning by this, according to Macfarlane, that “knowledge consists of the careful study of what is within our reach”.
When it comes to meticulous study, Man Shepherd does not do it by half measures. His Cairngorms are approached in a series of chapters each devoted to a particular theme: water, frost and snow, air and light, life (plants), still life (birds, animals, insects), still life (man), sleep, the senses… About the five senses stimulated by mountain journeys, Nan Shepherd writes: “Each sense exalted to its most delicate power is itself a total experience. This is the innocence we have lost.”
This intimate experience led to a gradual change in her approach to the mountain which was, at first, limited to the sensation of height or effort. By dint of traveling through the Cairngorms, she has acquired the conviction that mountain hiking is “a journey of being”. Because, she adds, “as I penetrate deeper into the life of the mountain, I also penetrate into my own.”
Nan Shepherd died 43 years ago. Its Scottish massif is today the largest natural park in Great Britain. It is crossed by hiking trails and includes three ski resorts. The author is today represented on Scottish five pound notes. This shows the notoriety she has acquired.
Pierre TANGUY.
The living mountain, Nan Shepherd, Christian Bourgois publisher, pocket format, 2024, 203 pages, 9.50 euros
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