A Journey into Being

 

The Times Literary Supplement describes the Scottish writer and poet, Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) as 'a close observer of country life’. It would be fair to say that Nan Shepherd is not a household name in her own native country although she was the first two women, along with the scientist Mary Somerville, ever to be chosen by the board of the Royal Bank of Scotland this year in April to appear on the Scottish £5 note. But when I mentioned her name even to the most well-read Scottish friends, they usually shake their heads in confusion or scratch their heads as an indication of her obscurity.

'It's a grand thing to get leave to live.' The Scottish writer and poet, Nan Shepherd was one of the first women featured on the Scottish £5 note. And yet, her name is not a household name both in our own native country as well as outside of Scotland. 

Although she was a writer, her daytime job was teaching and training teachers at the college. Gordon’s great aunt was one of her pupils who remembered her vividly, especially, her splendid auburn hair which made her look like a Pre-Raphaelite muse. One of my favourite books by Shepherd is The Living Mountain which many of her critics regard as her masterpiece of nature writing. She was a keen hill walker and in The Living Mountain, she described her journeys into the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd is one of my all time favourite books.

Shepard was one of the best prose writers of her generation. Her intense and poetic prose about the observation of nature is a heart-rooted one. Although she did not publish The Living Mountain for more than thirty years after she wrote it during the Second World War, it is now republished in a new edition by Canon Gate Books with a superb introductory essay by Robert Macfarlane because the insight, vitality, wit and magnanimity of Shepherd endure.

Image credit: Photograph of Nan Shepherd © The Estate of Nan Shepherd

People tend to frown upon nature writing as if it had been hewn out of the language of purple prose, all put together with tinsel and baroque descriptions of the sky and the sea. If one takes any sentences out from Shepherd’s book, one is immediately aware of the fact that there is nothing purple about her sensitive writing.

 

Although her joie de vivre and humour lit up her accounts of the animals she encountered during her walk in the mountains, experience (the Second World War) had taught her the pathos and anxiety of the hidden life. It was written in free-flowing prose that soars to heights that are reminiscent of Thoreau, Emerson and Richard Jefferies, the author of The Story of My Heart (1883). She had the vision of the naturalist as well as the knowledge of the scientist.

She treated the mountains as the living and spiritual beings like the fishermen, who tend to be superstitious, treat the sea with respect as the living thing, always restless, full of beauty and horror. The real hero of The Living Mountain is life itself. She described her quest or exploration of the mountains as ‘a journey into Being’. She wrote:

‘I believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on pilgrimage to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into Being; for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour, I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy, that leap out of the self that makes man like a god. I am not out of myself, but in myself. I am. To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain.’

Essential items to pack before my peripatetic excursions to the apparently depopulated world. Books and music are things that I cannot live without.

 

Every year, I make a promise to myself that I would go up to the mountains after the harvest festival. It is a gesture of marking the end of summer or the prelude to the winter. Also, it is a way of paying an annual tribute to Nan Shepherd by following her footsteps in the places she travelled among the Cairngorm Mountains.

Modern Stories of The Open Air (a vintage collection of short stories of the countryside, the sea, and life out of doors, edited by John Hadfield.

Last week, Gordon and I packed a couple of our books including Shepherd’s The Living Mountains and Modern Stories of The Open Air (a collection of short stories of the countryside, the sea, and life out of doors, edited by John Hadfield, the author of a comic novel, Love on a Branch Line (1959)). I prepared the picnic food to take on the road such as pasta salads, mini sandwiches and pies which are easy to store inside the cooler container in Gordon’s car. We both love classical music, in particular, the art songs (German lieder) which are serene and appropriate during our travel to the highlands.

I love the voice of Felicity Lott. This is the most beautiful record of Richard Strauss's songs accompanied by the pianist, Graham Johnson.

 

Peter Anders (tenor) is Gordon's favourite singer. He prefers Anders's rendition of Strauss's lieder with a full orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.

 

We could not decide which album (yes, I still call it that!) to take into the car in the early hours of the morning. Gordon prefers an orchestral arrangement of Richard Strauss’s songs performed by his favourite tenor, Peter Anders. I love the minimal recital performance of Strauss’s songs by the English soprano, Felicity Lott and the pianist, Graham Johnson. So, in the end we decided to take both records.          

 

It could have been a spring day. Bright, transparent sky, opaque clouds. The glens and mountains are green and golden, merged with colourful patches of orange, mauve and pink heather like tartan patterns. Half way through our journey, we saw the blinding light of daybreak polishing the sky’s glass before the rising sun came into view. Some of the trees looked already bare and their black filigree of branches held up like an X-ray against the light. A wonderful stillness, unspoilt by the noise of the traffic that will soon dispel the dawn’s calm.

 

The pine trees by the roadside had a lingering and refreshing perfume which reminded me of the smell of freshly-laundered and starched shirts. When the sun came out above the cold, naked horizon, it was almost colourless, neither amber nor golden, but a pale disc, emerging out of the vast sky, like a halo, burning softly and solemnly for its briefest stay of the year. We heard the cries of Alpine habitats; curlew, lapwing and golden plover as they searched for the day’s first crumb.

Nature is the most austerely simple and savage in this time of the year. The fresh air of Scottish mountains had such a soothing and uplifting effect upon our tired spirits. In the distance, the solitary gamekeeper was setting the fire on the heather.  The smoke coiled up through the Alpine scenery while we drove on the winding, hairpin bends on the road.

When we reached to the top of the mountain, we could no longer distinguish between the smoke and the clouds. The heaven and the earth seemed to be one in that abstract moment of emptiness. We looked out for the reassurance of the familiar signs – the flight of a bird or a breath of wind to confirm that there is still some life beyond our own being through the clouds and the smoke. 

 

 

We stopped the car by the roadside and we had our prepared picnic lunch. We listened to a haunting melody of Richard Strauss in a song called ‘Waldseligkeit (Woodland Bliss)’ beautifully sung by the tenor, Peter Anders. It was composed in 1901 and Strauss dedicated to his wife, Pauline, a soprano singer, and its concluding words are: ‘I am completely my own yet entirely yours.’ The music, in Strauss’s favourite key for melancholy mood, F sharp, describes a solitary wanderer in the rustling forest at night. The words and music seemed very appropriate as we watched the formation of fog along the mountain slopes.

We listened to a haunting melody of Richard Strauss in a song called ‘Waldseligkeit (Woodland Bliss)’ beautifully sung by the tenor, Peter Anders (1908-1954). Gordon absolutely adores the voice of Peter Anders.

The Composer, Richard Strauss dedicated this beautiful song, Waldseligkeit to his wife, Pauline, a soprano singer, and its concluding words are: ‘I am completely my own yet entirely yours.’ You can listen to  Peter Anders singing this song on here

In front of us, there were the very mountains that inspired Shepherd. The smoke, the heather, the stillness, the pine trees, deserted mountain roads like zig-zag tracks left behind by a caterpillar in the garden and the clouds. It is not an exaggeration when Gordon said to me you can wrap the atmosphere of the Scottish highlands around you like a grey flannel cloak.  

 



 

 

In the distance, the solitary gamekeeper was setting the fire on the heather.  The smoke coiled up through the Alpine scenery while we drove on the winding, hairpin bends on the road.

We could no longer distinguish between the smoke and the clouds as if the heaven and the earth seemed to be one in that abstract moment of emptiness...

We watched the formation of fog along the mountain slopes...

 

This romantic and ethereal landscape reminded me of Shepherd’s thought-provoking sentence when she wrote: ‘Man has no other reason for his existence’ except ‘to look on anything…with the love that penetrates to its essence.’