The Living Mountain (Canons): A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland: 6

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This is not The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh’s groundbreaking work of scholarship about colonialism and the Anthropocene, but the symbolic value of the scented “nut” attracting the Anthropoi to the Great Mountain is hard to miss. Reading this book we will remember how trade in nutmegs from the Banda islands near Java, which are in the shadows of the volcanic Gunung Api (Fire Mountain) opened up a trajectory of Western colonialism with far-reaching effects. The Circle of Reason won the Prix Medicis Etranger, one of France's top literary awards, and The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the Grand Prize for Fiction at the Frankfurt International e-Book Awards in 2001. The Hungry Tide won the Hutch Crossword Book Prize in 2006. In 2007 Amitav Ghosh was awarded the Grinzane Cavour Prize in Turin, Italy. Amitav Ghosh has written for many publications, including the Hindu, The New Yorker and Granta, and he has served on the juries of several international film festivals, including Locarno and Venice. He has taught at many universities in India and the USA, including Delhi University, Columbia, the City University of New York and Harvard. He no longer teaches and is currently writing the next volume of the Ibis Trilogy. Shepherd, Nan (2019). The living mountain. Robert Macfarlane, Jeanette Winterson. Great Britain. ISBN 978-1-78689-735-0. OCLC 1084507268. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) This contains some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read in a long time but is not going to please everyone. In spite of talking about little else than nature, it is far more an interior rumination on the author’s part. In 2017 a commemorative plaque was placed outside her former home, Dunvegan, in the North Deeside Road, Cults. [18] See also [ edit ]

Galileo Publishing - in the Cairngorms by Nan Shepherd -Foreword by Robert Macfarlane". Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 . Retrieved 10 July 2014. The first person narrator (Maansi) is now a young girl in one of the warring villages of the Valley with a towering mountain overlooking their settlement. This snowy mountain is the Mahaparbat or the Great Mountain, and its peak is “almost always wreathed in clouds”. This takes on the form of a fable, one that highlights exactly what can go wrong if we dominate nature and cultivate too much of her riches and resources; it is a story that is very ecologically aware and one that is cautionary and intelligent: it is a very timely and important piece of writing. I find myself drawn to more and more books like this, books that engage with issues of ecology and the environment. Two friends, our unnamed narrator and his friend Maansi, while deciding on a theme for their book club for the year ahead stumble across the word ANTHROPOCENE- a term that is making waves and Maansi, in particular, is quite keen on. However, as the narrative progresses Maansi shares a vivid dream she has had that has left her more than a little unsettled. Her dream tells the story of Mahaparbat, the Great Mountain which shelters several warring villages that are settled in the Valley high in the Himalayas. Though life is not easy, the indigenous population lives under the protection of the Mountain enjoying the bounty of the natural resources that draw life and are nourished by the Mountain. The mountain is revered by the villagers, who sing and celebrate in its praise following the customs passed down by their ancestors. The binding rule was that those from the valley were not to set foot on the slopes of the Mahaparbat. Of all the natural resources available to the inhabitants of the Valley, The Magic Tree, whose wood, leaves, fruit and nuts each yield multiple uses, is particularly special. The nut attracts special attention and is in high demand for its multiple benefits. Trading Week, the annual trade and commerce between the Elderpeople of the Valley and those from the Lowlands, take place at the pass of the Mountain beyond which outsiders are not permitted. After a representative from a group of people who call themselves Anthropoi expresses curiosity and requests access to Great Mountain and is denied the same in keeping with the Law of the Valley, interests swiftly evolve into action on the part of the Anthropoi, who invade the Valley and take control over the inhabitants, their resources and the Great Mountain. Shepherd, Nan. (2011). The living mountain: a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-0-85786-183-2. OCLC 778121107.An allegorical work – one that seems a bit too predictable. For we are all acquainted with the changes our natural environment is going through. Ghosh understands the Age of Anthropoi or the Era of Anthropocene. He can foresee that we are destined to be doomed.

My favourite chapter was the one about Man in the Cairngorms. The various characters she sketched were a delight to read about. The final chapter, although very short, compressed all the layers of reflection, knowledge and experience, into something jewel-like, as she celebrated the holistic nature of her overall experience of those mountains, and the unending experiences and insights to be gained by concentration on the simplest of objects or happenings or from the landscape.

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Nan Shepherd logged decades in Scotland's Cairngorms, a mountain range in that country's northeast, and wrote a book about her relationship with those mountains in the 1940s. The Living Mountain did not see print, however, until the 1970s. And now, among a subset of nature-writing fans, it is a mini-classic of sorts, a Scottish Walden born of the mountains instead of a pond. Ghosh tells this tale of the Valley people, and those who arrive there soon after, at a brisk pace. Shorn of distracting detail and embellishments, the deceptively simple prose flows like a clear mountain stream. The Mahaparbat is evidently rich as it nurtures the Magic Tree which feeds the people of the Valley, providing them delicious fruits, scented nuts and honey. The villagers exchange some of these gifts with people from the Lowlands, but they never let these traders enter their Valley. Enter the Anthropoi Nan Shepherd 1893–1981" (PDF). Scottish Literary Tour Trust. 2003 . Retrieved 22 December 2013. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) The Living Mountain is especially relevant today when we have been battling a pandemic and are facing a climate catastrophe: both of which are products of our insufficient understanding of mankind's relationship with nature, and our sustained appropriation and abuse of natural resources. This is a book of our times, for our times, and it will resonate strongly with readers of all ages. I loved how the author put forth the notion of the life-force, the spirit of the mountain (as a stand in for nature more broadly), which has been destroyed as a result of unthinking human intervention. I couldn’t help but think of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis here which too, explored this idea of animals losing their powers to talk and so on, and trees losing their spirit because of human intervention.

One autumn afternoon, about ten years ago, I sat on a mountainside in Colorado surrounded by aspens. As the wind blew, I could hear the leaves rustle, first from far away, then closer and closer, until I felt the wind in my hair, with leaves rustling loudly overhead. Then slowly, the rustling moved further away, until the sequence started again. Sitting, listening with all my senses, made me feel a part of the mountain. I could smell the autumn leaves, feel a slight chill in the air, hear and feel the wind as a movement. Macfarlane, Robert (27 December 2013). "How Nan Shepherd remade my vision of the Cairngorms". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 24 November 2019. I had spent nearly 20 years exploring them on foot and ski: winter-climbing in the gullies of their corries, camping out on the high tundra of their plateaux. But Shepherd’s prose showed me how little I really knew of the range. Its combination of intense scrutiny, deep familiarity and glittering imagery re-made my vision of these familiar hills. It taught me to see them, rather than just to look at them. There is no doubt that The Living Mountain is a nice bit of writing and there were moments when I felt transported to the Cairngorms and into Shepherd's inner most musings on nature. Anna " Nan" Shepherd (11 February 1893 – 27 February 1981) was a Scottish Modernist writer and poet, best known for her seminal mountain memoir, The Living Mountain, based on experiences of hill walking in the Cairngorms. This is noted as an influence by nature writers who include Robert Macfarlane and Richard Mabey. [1] She also wrote poetry and three novels set in small fictional communities in Northern Scotland. The landscape and weather of this area played a major role in her novels and provided a focus for her poetry. Shepherd served as a lecturer in English at the Aberdeen College of Education for most of her working life. [2] Life [ edit ]It's become increasingly rare to have an intimate and lasting relationship with a wild space. If you have one, I think you will identify with many of Shepherd's experiences; if you don't, perhaps this book will provide the impetus to get out there and find your own living mountain (or dune, or forest, or whatever). While the villagers were often at war with one another, all of them revered the mountain, which provided them sustenance. They had heard from their ancestors that among all mountains of the world, their Mahaparbat was the “most alive” and would take care of them, “but only on condition that we told stories about it, and sang about it, and danced for it”. Also, they were never to set foot on its slopes. Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He studied in Dehra Dun, New Delhi, Alexandria and Oxford and his first job was at the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He earned a doctorate at Oxford before he wrote his first novel, which was published in 1986.