This is such a light book, wrapped in a simple white and gold jacket, so unassuming and yet what a glorious explosion of colour, sound, texture and life tucked inside it. I'd heard great things about this book, the author's name often dropped by other great nature writers, such as Robert Macfarlane, Kerry Andrews, Rebecca Solnit. This tiny gem of sublime prose written at the end of the Second World War, hidden from publication for thirty years, labelled as 'mineral memoried' by Macfarlane, is a must for the bookshelf - a gift that will keep giving every time you read it.
Anna (Nan) Shepherd was also a tiny woman, slight in stature but mighty in voice. She began, like all visitors to the Cairngorms, seeking height, conquering peeks to look down on the valleys, but she began to understand them as one whole body and spent time on this body, not subduing it: 'I knew when I'd looked for a long time, that I had hardly begun to see.'
Each chapter breaks down her experiences into the senses rather than scenery; air, water, frost and snow are exquisitely explored and lead to the final chapter on just 'being.' She fully believed that time spent with her mountains led to a life of the senses, lived so purely that 'the body may be said to think.' Each foot placed and lifted was an act of breathing. This interplay of perception and reception is unique, slowing down the pedestrian to explore the person: 'I have walked out of the body and into the mountain.'
The introduction by Macfarlane calls the mountains Shepherd's 'inland island.' Her book is a love letter to her experiences. She called her book a 'traffic of love,' and she sends love from the mountains through her words to us - using her eyes to feel. 'How can I number the ways which the eye gives me entry? - the world of light, of colour, of shape, of shadow: of mathematical precision in the snowflake, the ice formation, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal: of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging line of the mountain faces.'
Shepherd also understood that there are many perspectives when faced with such a wide vista. David Hockney noted that we see more than one focal point within one view. She revels in this change from moment to moment as mist and low cloud can shift the landscape at alarming speed. Often this leads to misconception as the eye is tricked by every rock, branch, or boulder. This serves to remind the walker that 'One walks among elementals, and elementals are not governable.'
War itself makes no appearance in this book as she leaves home to avoid any news of it, but she does mention the fatalities on her mountains; including the aircraft crew who misjudged the difficulty of the terrain and a party of school children who were caught by a sudden change of weather: 'Some are not rescued. A man and girl are found, months too late, far out of their path, the girl on abraded hands and knees as she crawled her way through drift. I see her living face still. (She was one of my students).'
The mountain is not always a friend but is constant and in a world of tumultuous change, it must have been a welcome diversion. In these times of difficult challenges, we all need a place to turn to that will steady us, a path to tread that will keep us moving forwards: 'I have discovered my mountain - its weathers, its airs and lights, its singing burns, its haunted dells, its pinnacles and tarns, its birds and flowers, its snows, its long blue distances.'
Read this book and you too might discover its treasures.
Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by CommaPress, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Zine magazine and The Arts Council and she writes her own blog, Small Sublime.
