A couple of weeks ago we went into London to help my daughter and her boyfriend get some fixtures into their new flat. As Marianne was opening boxes to populate the new bookshelves she held out a slim volume, said “Dad, you have to read this book” and handed me The Living Mountain, which is a book about the Cairngorms.

Nan Shepherd was born in Aberdeen in the late 19th century,  graduated from Aberdeen university in 1915 and spent the next 41 years teaching English at what is now the Aberdeen College of Education.  She published three modernist novels between 1928 and 1933, and a book of poetry in 1934. The Living Mountain was written towards the end of the Second World War but was put away in a drawer and was not published until 1977, only four years before Shepherd’s death in 1981.

This book is extraordinary!  But it’s  rather hard to define what it is; easier to say what it isn’t. It isn’t a guidebook, nor a travelogue, and there’s very little of the Wainwright in this book. It only has one map showing the rough layout of the Cairngorns and details no trails, routes or paths.

What it is instead could be described as a prose poem, a paean to the Cairngorms, a celebration of being and place. The Guardian called it “The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain”. The Canongate Books edition that Marianne gave me has an introduction by Robert MacFarlane (a name that will crop up later in the year) who made a documentary about it for BBC Scotland in 2014 – alas not currently on iPlayer or the BBC Store.

Shepherd came to realise that the truest joy of the mountains is not climbing to the highest peaks, but just to be there, as she calls it “in the mountain”.She writes about the plateau that is at the heart of the Cairngorm as well as the peaks.  She talks of views and experiences and weather – wind and rain and ice and snow and sunshine. She describes shapes and colours and sensations and tastes and smells. There is one chapter about snow and ice where three pages are taken up with describing the forms ice takes as running water freezes. I could go on….but honestly, read it yourself and find out. 

There are another 47 books to go as part of this 2017 reading project but I think that when the final reckoning is made The Living Mountain will be right at the top of the list of books that made the greatest impression on me.