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

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The Living Mountain" is poetic prose in praise of the Cairngorm Mountains of northeastern Scotland. It's nature writing with a philosophical feeling to it. Nan Shepherd started exploring the Cairngorms at an early age, and continued mountain walking until she was aged. Although she was well-traveled, she always returned to her home near the eastern side of the mountain range. Shepherd had climbed its peaks, but she seemed to draw more pleasure from the plateau--observing wildlife, exploring the lochs, and following springs to their natural source. She was a very observant person who often took in the activity of the natural world while she maintained stillness. Shepherd wrote descriptions that use all the senses in appreciating the beautiful, but sometimes unforgiving, mountains. This is not The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh’s groundbreaking work of scholarship about colonialism and the Anthropocene, but the symbolic value of the scented “nut” attracting the Anthropoi to the Great Mountain is hard to miss. Reading this book we will remember how trade in nutmegs from the Banda islands near Java, which are in the shadows of the volcanic Gunung Api (Fire Mountain) opened up a trajectory of Western colonialism with far-reaching effects. Again, through Ghosh’s use of names like Kraani (perhaps from the kerani or clerk, who was the cog and the wheel of colonising powers) for the “ferocious soldiers” of the Anthropoi, Varvaroi (maybe from the Bengali “borbor” or barbaric) for the Valley people who joined the race to climb the mountain, and the Anthropoi (the humans responsible for ushering in the Anthropocene), Ghosh has strewn his narrative with codes and hints of the time and issues anchoring this fairy-tale like narrative.

But while reading it, they are – because of the power of the surrounding writing – fleetingly visible. Does that sound like nonsense? I hope not. (And I will fight anyone who says this book is nonsense. It's common sense, cubed.) Nan Shepherd 1893–1981" (PDF). Scottish Literary Tour Trust. 2003 . Retrieved 22 December 2013. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) Recounted as a dream, this is a fable about Mahaparbat, the Living Mountain; the indigenous valley dwellers who live and prosper in its shelter; the assault on the mountain for commercial benefit by the Anthropoi, humans whose sole aim is to reap the bounty of nature; and the disaster that unfolds as a result.

Ghosh tells this tale of the Valley people, and those who arrive there soon after, at a brisk pace. Shorn of distracting detail and embellishments, the deceptively simple prose flows like a clear mountain stream. The Mahaparbat is evidently rich as it nurtures the Magic Tree which feeds the people of the Valley, providing them delicious fruits, scented nuts and honey. The villagers exchange some of these gifts with people from the Lowlands, but they never let these traders enter their Valley. Enter the Anthropoi

Like the song, Ghosh’s fable leaves us with a clear view of our chosen doom. Neither provide easy answers. What they do, though, is push us to re-examine received wisdom; to question whether wisdom can even be drawn from those who have brought us to where we are, or whether we need to learn to listen, once again, to old tales we have long dismissed. And when the colonised finally rebel and reclaim their space, starting to follow in the path the colonisers have set before them as model, once again they are found fault with, and all blame for any harm placed on them. The brilliant introduction notes that ‘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…’ I couldn’t think of a more fitting description. It is ephemeral and transcendent, but completely couched in the very real earthiness of the inhospitable environment. We feel the chill of the gales, the crisp delicacy of crunching new snow beneath our boots, the verdant scent of damp moss and marvel at the resplendent abundance of the flora and fauna in so harsh an environment. 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.Shepherd was a keen hill-walker. Her poetry expresses her love for the mountainous Grampian landscape. While a student at university, Shepherd wrote poems for the student magazine, Alma Mater, but not until 1934 was a collection of her poetry, In the Cairngorms, published. [5] This was reissued in April 2014 by Galileo Publishers, Cambridge, with a new introduction by Robert Macfarlane. [8] Non-fiction [ edit ] I had spent nearly 20 years exploring them on foot and ski: winter-climbing in the gullies of their corries, camping out on the high tundra of their plateaux. But Shepherd’s prose showed me how little I really knew of the range. Its combination of intense scrutiny, deep familiarity and glittering imagery re-made my vision of these familiar hills. It taught me to see them, rather than just to look at them. Nan Shepherd was born on 11 February 1893 at Westerton Cottage, Cults, now a suburb of Aberdeen, to John and Jane Shepherd. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Dunvegan, Cults, the house she then lived in for most of her life. [3] She attended Aberdeen High School for Girls and graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1915.

I'm a bit embarrassed when I say that I haven't explored much of Scotland, my home country. The parts I have explored have been incredible. The Isle of Harris (Western Isles) is one of my most recent explorations of Scotland, and what a beautiful part of the world it is. The edgy and cragged land of greens and greys, the long, winding single roads on the twisted hills, the purest, clearest waters, a piece of land far from conventional settlements.This contains some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read in a long time but is not going to please everyone. In spite of talking about little else than nature, it is far more an interior rumination on the author’s part. 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. Her emphasis is on human activity and in that sense, as Robert Macfarlane rightly states in his introduction, she presents a specific form of humanism. A humanism that emerges in a special way in the activity of walking, as a merging into the landscape and a moving experience of existence through physicality: “ Walking thus, hour after hour, the senses keyed, one walks the flesh transparent. But no metaphor, transparent, or light as air, is adequate. The body is not made negligible, but paramount. Flesh is not annihilated but fulfilled. One is not bodiless, but essential body. It is therefore when the body is keyed to its highest potential and controlled to a harmony profound deepening into something that resembles trance, that I discover most nearly what it is to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain. I am a manifestation of its total life, as is the starry saxifrage or the white-winged ptarmigan”. The story is of a people who lived under the benevolent protection of a mountain, the Mahaparbat, which gave them all they needed to live happy, contented lives, and which was treated as sacred and never interfered with.

This takes on the form of a fable, one that highlights exactly what can go wrong if we dominate nature and cultivate too much of her riches and resources; it is a story that is very ecologically aware and one that is cautionary and intelligent: it is a very timely and important piece of writing. I find myself drawn to more and more books like this, books that engage with issues of ecology and the environment.The Living Mountain is a short piece of writing that is rich in allegory and meaning; it comes from a dream brought on by anxiety surrounding the Anthropocene and its connotations: it comes from nervousness about the future in the wake of our attitude towards the natural world. What sets it apart, however, from the old tales is that The Living Mountain is framed as a story of our times. It begins in the present with book buddies discussing the Anthropocene, and its allegories stay riveted to the history of colonialism and the false belief in progress and limitless growth. They would not admit that it was not the manner of climb that was to blame for our troubles—it was the climb itself. Like most widely applicable fables, The Living Mountain is not set in a clearly recognisable place, but there are clues to the deep Himalayan nature of the piece. One is in its alternative Hindi title “Mahaparbat”, meaning Great Mountain. There is no doubt that The Living Mountain is a nice bit of writing and there were moments when I felt transported to the Cairngorms and into Shepherd's inner most musings on nature.