In the tradition of John Muir for whom going to the woods was going home, the Living Mountain is Nan Shepherd’s paean to the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland. The writer and academic lived and breathed the landscape, weather and people of this area. They are born of the mountain’s bones and are, as she, a manifestation of it, as much a part of its biome as the saxifrage and deeprooted campion, the pine trees, tits, tarns and ptarmigans, the corries and snow. Shepherd visits the mountain as she would a friend, for no other reason but to be with it, get close to it, walk its unpaths, sleep in its air, to live in one sense at a time. Her command of language is nothing short of brilliant. Without ever having visited the Scottish highlands, she has allowed me to know them in the most intimate way. She loves this place as Tim Robinson loved Connemara as Rachel Carson loved the sea. The mountain is a metaphor of course and the more she penetrates its life, the further she enters her own. Slowly, through the contours, colours, flowers and rocks, she finds her way in. As do I.