Weather Report: On Beauty
Post #14: The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
If you have a copy of my book, Weather Report: A 90-day journal for reflection and well-being, with the aid of the Beaufort Wind Scale, you might have noticed two things; that you are daily invited to write or draw, 'one thing you found beautiful today', and a list of reading resources at the back. These are not unconnected.
This is a year-long project to write regularly, choosing one of the books from that list with a few wildcards too. I want to go deeper into the subject of beauty and, together with you who join me here, to deepen my own understanding of why it is important. Some of the books on the list are very recent; others are long-standing companions that I return to over and over. To me these are the kind of books that, having read them, I can gain solace simply from having them on my shelves.
My chosen book this time is Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, a long beloved book of mine as might be guessed from the image of the worn and slightly marked cover of my copy above.
Written in the 1940s, during WW2, but not published until the 1970s, its rediscovery for new generations of readers has heralded a renewed interest in nature writing by women. (See also post #9 on Kerri ní Dochartaigh1). The Living Mountain in question is Shepherd’s local Cairngorm range in Scotland and she brings the reader with her as she looks closely and closer still at her beloved topography. Shepherd’s approach is the antithesis of ‘Munro Bagging’, there is no conquering here but instead a patient attention, both inner and outer.
“The more one learns of this intricate interplay of soil, altitude, weather, and the living tissues of plant and insect (an intricacy that has its astonishing moments, as when sundew and butterwort eat the insects), the more the mystery deepens. Knowledge does not dispel mystery.” (Shepherd, p. 59)
The Living Mountain was one of two physical books I carried in my rucksack on various Camino journeys across the north of Spain a few years ago. I just had to have a physical book, one that would sustain me and one that I could dip into anywhere and be rewarded, and it had to be a slim book. The Living Mountain never disappointed. I remember being unable to sleep one night, tossing and turning in my alberque bunk, then taking out Shepherd’s book and randomly opening it, my torch angled so as not to disturb others sleeping, and smiling at the serendipity that it opened at the chapter titled ‘Sleep’.
“No one knows the mountain completely who has not slept on it. As one slips over into sleep, the mind grows limpid; the body melts; perception alone remains… These moments of quiescent perceptiveness before sleep are among the most rewarding of the day. I am emptied of preoccupation, there is nothing between me and the earth and sky. In midsummer the north glows with light long after midnight is past. As I watch, the light comes pouring round the edges of the shapes that stand against the sky, sharpening them till the more slender have a sort of glowing insubstantiality, as though they were themselves nothing but light. Up on the plateau, light lingers incredibly far into the night, long after it has left the rest of the earth. Watching it, the mind grows incandescent and its glow burns down into deep and tranquil sleep.” (The Living Mountain p.90)
Jenny Sturgeon in conversation with Nan Shepherd’s literary executor and close family friend, Erlend Clouston
Since I drafted an initial version of this post a couple of weeks ago I have been on a course at Schumacher College, Devon, with the poetic title “The Labyrinth and the Dancing Floor”2. With its stated aim of finding ways to help us ‘regain our original kinship with the more-than-human world’ at this time of challenge, change and in many instances, chaos, Nan Shepherd’s seminal work was naturally referenced several times by our guides for the week'; Charlotte, Caroline3, Nick and Mark.
As Shepherd discovered in the Cairngorms, so were we guided towards an understanding that ‘because the times are urgent, we must slow down’.
“So I looked slowly across the Coire Loch, and began to understand that haste can do nothing with these hills. I knew when I had looked for a long time that I had hardly begun to see.” (Shepherd, p. 11)
Even the list of the twelve chapter titles at the front of Shepherd’s book are an invitation to pause, to consider, to be… Here is a sample: The Plateau; The Recesses; Air and Light; The Senses.
I will close with this quote from the final pages of The The Living Mountain, from the chapter titled, Being:
“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.” (Shepherd, p. 106)
Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, with just over a hundred pages, might be a small book, but her writing has the capacity to resonate like a struck bell.4
because the times are urgent, we must slow down’ - thank you for a timely link to this work, Margaret.
Lovely connection between the mountain and the core message of the Labyrinth and Dancing Floor Margaret. I’ve not read Nan Shepard, but I should look her up when I’m home.