Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 56
A Nature Book Reader
ANDREW GREIG
Andrew Greig is a writer of poetry, novels and non fIction
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
The Living Mountain is
truly astounding. Written
in the Forties, it conveys
and comprehends the
sheer physicality of our
being, one encountered in
the mountains. The Living
Mountain is a praise of how
we see the world in and
through our own bodies.
Shepherd emphasizes the
sensuous and the sensory. For
her transcendence is entirely
immanent, and spirituality
inextricable from the sensual.
over years of wandering in
the Cairngorms, she comes to
understand and honour both
the otherness of the natural
world and the completeness
of our participation in it.
Along with Neil Gunn,
she embodies an early and
unexpected Scottish Zen,
hard-headed, a kind of
transcendent materialism.
She renders these insights
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in anecdote, in moments
of experience, and for me
summons again the lifegiving presentness we
seek and find in physical
participation in the greater
world. The hereness of here,
the nowness of now: the
living mountain.
Further Reading
Collected Poems
by Norman MacCaig
The Shining
Mountain
by Pete Boardman
