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mwinters__ 's review for:
The Living Mountain
by Nan Shepherd
Robert MacFarlane's introduction makes the best, if perhaps most obvious, point: this is nature writing, specifically mountain writing, that focusses not on the singular goal of the summit, but instead wanders and observes, sleeps and listens, a lovely antithesis to linear intent. Ah, and this one's written by a woman. Not to essentialize, of course, but there is a distinctively masculine-coded pyschosexual narrative pattern to the summit-story, and Shepherd's book shows the way to a different, and arguably fuller and richer, model of engagement.
The book's at it's best when it leans into the soul of human-to-mountain communion: and though Shepherd rejects "ecstasy" as a formal category for what she's getting at, it comes close enough that you'd be forgiven for not seeing the difference. And yet, these moments are present alongside (and, within) a charming plainspoken vernacular style. Most of the book is given to cataloguing all that Shepherd has witnessed, through a range of sensory inputs, wandering her beloved Scottish Cairngorms. It's a brief but profound and guileless but enchanting demonstration of long, loving attention to a place--deserving of a place on the shelf next to (or above?) Muir and Thoreau and the rest.
The book's at it's best when it leans into the soul of human-to-mountain communion: and though Shepherd rejects "ecstasy" as a formal category for what she's getting at, it comes close enough that you'd be forgiven for not seeing the difference. And yet, these moments are present alongside (and, within) a charming plainspoken vernacular style. Most of the book is given to cataloguing all that Shepherd has witnessed, through a range of sensory inputs, wandering her beloved Scottish Cairngorms. It's a brief but profound and guileless but enchanting demonstration of long, loving attention to a place--deserving of a place on the shelf next to (or above?) Muir and Thoreau and the rest.