A Son of the Rock

A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

In The Grampian Quartet, Canongate, 1996, 88 p, plus 2 p Author’s Foreword, 1 p Contents and v p Introduction by Roderick Watson.

One of the hallmarks of Scottish writing (or I should say good Scottish writing) is its facility for landscape description. In The Living Mountain, a non-fiction work of virtually nothing but description, Nan Shepherd elevates this to an outstanding degree. Here is the Cairngorm plateau in all its glory, beauty and menace; its prominences, its rocks, its shifting hues, its changing moods, its sparkling waters, its light and air, its sudden vistas and deceptive perspectives, its capricious – and dangerous – weather, its plants, birds and deer, its people, its effect on the senses, its being. If Shepherd had set out to write a love letter to the Cairngorms she could not have succeeded better. Her immersion in and knowledge of the landscape is profound. That it did not find a publisher on being written towards the end of World War 2 is amazing. It did not see the light of day till Aberdeen University Press published it in 1977. Shepherd’s foreword to that edition refers to the changes that have occurred in the Highlands during the interim. But her feelings about the mountains remained the same. They are where she seemed to be most at home, at one with herself and the world.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; a closing bracket without a previous opening one. Otherwise; “Its waters are white” (if they were tumbling over rocks, yes; but this is in a passage about clarity. The last thing an utterly transparent medium is is white. You can not see through white. Try looking through a piece of paper,) acclimitisation (acclimatisation,) felspar (feldspar.) “In December an open heather” (in open heather.)