It's become increasingly rare to have an intimate and lasting relationship with a wild space. If you have one, I think you will identify with many of Shepherd's experiences; if you don't, perhaps this book will provide the impetus to get out there and find your own living mountain (or dune, or forest, or whatever). My aim is to highlight incredible women, whose achievements were often overlooked compared to those of their male counterparts. I hope to raise awareness of women’s rights in travel, and encourage others not to be afraid to take on a challenge.”

Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it. However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them. Perched in time partway between Thoreau’s meditation on the splendors of mystery in the age of knowledge and Feynman’s legendary Ode to a Flower monologue about the reciprocity of knowledge and mystery, Shepherd writes: That is not to say that you, whomever is reading this review, would feel the same way. You, who is an individual in your own right, who sees nature in your unique way and who reacts to prose work with distinctly differing reflections. The book was written in the last years of the Second World War. You catch this in the details. It was put in a drawer and not published until 1977. Complaints were made that maps and photos should be added. In fact, I thought this myself, but only at the start. You must pay attention and listen. You do not want to be diverted. The writing is lyrical, and it leaves you thinking.Around the time Virginia Woolf beheld the magnificent interleaving of every part of nature in the epiphany that made her an artist and before Rachel Carson made ecology a household word, Shepherd serenades the intricate ecosystem of the mountain: It took a little while to get onto the rhythm of the book, as it takes one time to get into the rhythm of a good trek into the mountains, but worth persisting, the rewards will be many. Of water, she wrote, “I love its flash and gleam, its music, its pliancy and grace, its slap against my body; but I fear its strength.”

For the most appalling quality of water is its strength. I love its flash and gleam, its music, its pliancy and grace, its slap against my body; but I fear its strength. I fear it as my ancestors must have feared the natural forces that they worshipped. All the mysteries are in its movement. It slips out of holes in the earth like the ancient snake. I have seen its birth; and the more I gaze at that sure and inremitting surge of water at the very top of the mountain, the more I am baffled. We make it all so easy, any child in school can understand it – water rises in the hills, it flows and finds its own level, and man can't live without it. Bud I don't understand it. I cannot fathom its power.”

Scottish cultural revival

Shepherd's short non-fiction book The Living Mountain, written in the 1940s, [9] reflects her experiences walking in the Cairngorm Mountains. She chose not to publish it until 1977, but it is now the book for which she is best known. [10] It has been quoted as an influence by prominent nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Joe Simpson. The Guardian called it "the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain". [11] Its functions as a memoir and field notes combine with metaphysical nature writing in the tradition of Thoreau or John Muir. [ citation needed] The 2011 Cannongate edition included a foreword by Robert Macfarlane and an afterword by Jeanette Winterson, [12] these were also included in the 2019 edition by the same publisher. [13] Annabel Abbs retraced Shepherd's steps through the Cairngorms for her book, Windswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Trailblazing Women ( Two Roads, 2021). Shepherd, Nan. (2011). The living mountain: a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-0-85786-183-2. OCLC 778121107. And last October, just as winter was tightening its grip upon the Highlands, I travelled to the Cairngorms to make a Secret Knowledge programme about Nan and the range. The film adapted a chapter of a book of mine called Landmarks, which explores the huge power of language – single words, strong style – to shape our sense of place.