First published in 1934, In The Cairngorms is Nan Shepherd's only book
of poems. Although she wrote three acclaimed novels, and a remarkable
prose meditation on the Cairngorms entitled The Living Mountain,
Shepherd considered her poetry to have been her finest work.
It took her twenty-five years to write these forty-six poems. Each is
possessed of a fierce intensity; together, they offer glimpses into what
she once called "the burning heart of life". Shepherd's lifelong
acquaintance with the Scottish mountains was a spiritual as well as a
geographical exploration: in the Cairngorms she discovered both
elemental beauty and profound metaphysical mystery. Her huge gifts as a
poet were to convey these discoveries in language that remains both
strange and thrilling to the modern reader.
As Robert Macfarlane observes in his foreword to this new edition of the
poems - the first for eighty years - Shepherd was someone who lived "all
the way through", and who relished "the feel, sight, scent and sounds of
the world." The phrase engraved on her memorial stone in Edinburgh
catches the joy and generosity with which she approached existence:
"It's a grand thing to get leave to live".
