0:00:17 > 0:00:21The Cairngorm Mountains in the Northeast of Scotland
0:00:21 > 0:00:22are Britain's Arctic.
0:00:25 > 0:00:26Born of fire,
0:00:26 > 0:00:28carved by ice,
0:00:28 > 0:00:33shaped by wind, water and snow,
0:00:33 > 0:00:37they are among the wildest landscapes of our archipelago.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45These are the mountains I know best and I've known longest.
0:00:45 > 0:00:46I first walked here as a boy
0:00:46 > 0:00:48more than 30 years ago with my grandparents,
0:00:48 > 0:00:50who lived on the northeast slopes of the range.
0:00:55 > 0:00:59I've since crossed the range on foot and ski many times.
0:01:00 > 0:01:03I thought I knew these peaks and glens really well,
0:01:03 > 0:01:07until, in my late twenties, I picked up a copy of this book
0:01:07 > 0:01:10The Living Mountain, by a woman called Nan Shepherd.
0:01:10 > 0:01:13It was written during the Second World War
0:01:13 > 0:01:17and amazingly, it lay in a drawer for more than three decades
0:01:17 > 0:01:20before at last being published in 1977.
0:01:21 > 0:01:26Over the years, I've read and reread Nan's magical book.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30It has changed the way I see not only these mountains
0:01:30 > 0:01:32but all mountainous landscape.
0:01:35 > 0:01:36More and more people
0:01:36 > 0:01:39are now finding their way to Nan Shepherd's words.
0:01:41 > 0:01:45But why does her little book, written 70 years ago,
0:01:45 > 0:01:49speak so powerfully to tens of thousands of people today?
0:01:50 > 0:01:53I believe that in The Living Mountain, Shepherd wrote
0:01:53 > 0:01:57one of the most brilliant works of modern landscape literature.
0:01:57 > 0:01:58A beautiful hymn
0:01:58 > 0:02:02to what she called "living all the way through".
0:02:29 > 0:02:30Braeriach.
0:02:31 > 0:02:33Ben Macdui.
0:02:33 > 0:02:34Cairn Toul.
0:02:36 > 0:02:40These are some of Britain's remotest and highest places.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44Places which drew Shepherd to them,
0:02:44 > 0:02:48and to which I have also returned again and again.
0:03:01 > 0:03:05Like me, Nan fell in love with what she called "the tang of height".
0:03:10 > 0:03:12WOMAN RECITES: "Summer on the high plateau
0:03:12 > 0:03:14"can be as delectable as honey.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19"It can also be a roaring scourge.
0:03:22 > 0:03:26"To those who love the place, both are good,
0:03:26 > 0:03:29"since both are part of its essential nature.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35"And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here."
0:03:42 > 0:03:44Nan Shepherd was born in the village of Cults
0:03:44 > 0:03:49on the outskirts of Aberdeen on the 11th of February, 1893.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54And for 87 years, she lived in this same house.
0:03:54 > 0:03:59"I've only had one bedroom my whole life," she once said, proudly.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05She read avidly as a child and began writing poetry as a teenager.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11In 1915, she graduated with the class prize
0:04:11 > 0:04:14in English literature from Aberdeen University.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20Soon afterwards, she joined the Aberdeen College of Education,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24where, for 37 years, she taught teachers how to teach.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29It might seem a fairly conventional career
0:04:29 > 0:04:33but Nan's free spirit was never far from the surface.
0:04:34 > 0:04:37She just was an outstanding sort of character.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43Very warm, friendly, laughing,
0:04:43 > 0:04:48cuddly and very different from anyone else in Aberdeen.
0:04:48 > 0:04:49Quite unique.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52She looked different.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56She had very wispy, flying-about hair,
0:04:56 > 0:05:00and she wrapped it round her ears. You remember in the '20s,
0:05:00 > 0:05:03they all had earphones, as they're called,
0:05:03 > 0:05:05and that was what she had.
0:05:05 > 0:05:10Part of the image, I think, romantic image.
0:05:10 > 0:05:12Oh, she was a character all right.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19Between 1920 and 1933, Shepherd published three brilliant novels...
0:05:21 > 0:05:25..all set in small rural communities of Northeast Scotland.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Shepherd always had an appetite for life, for movement.
0:05:34 > 0:05:39Describing herself as a toddler on her mother's knee, she writes,
0:05:39 > 0:05:42"I swear those limbs move as you look at them."
0:05:47 > 0:05:50As she grew older, Shepherd began to exercise those restless limbs
0:05:50 > 0:05:53in the foothills of the eastern Cairngorms,
0:05:53 > 0:05:57which rose up around 50 miles from her house.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04Formed over 400 million years ago,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07the Cairngorms are older than both the Alps and the Himalayas.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21Shepherd spent years exploring this landscape on foot...
0:06:22 > 0:06:26..slowly learning its intricacies and secrets.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Nan's passion for the mountains became strongly spiritual.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37She was no flag-planter, no peak-bagger.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41She was compelled by the mysteries of mountains.
0:06:41 > 0:06:46She was fascinated by what happens to mind and matter at height.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53As she put it in a letter to a friend in 1940...
0:06:55 > 0:07:00"To apprehend things, walking on a hill, seeing the light change,
0:07:00 > 0:07:03"the mist, the dark,
0:07:03 > 0:07:05"being aware,
0:07:05 > 0:07:10"using the whole of one's body to instruct the spirit,
0:07:10 > 0:07:13"it dissolves one's being.
0:07:13 > 0:07:17"I am no longer myself but a part of a life beyond myself."
0:07:22 > 0:07:24The result of that "dissolving"
0:07:24 > 0:07:27was her slim masterpiece -
0:07:27 > 0:07:30The Living Mountain.
0:07:33 > 0:07:35Over the years, I've read hundreds of books
0:07:35 > 0:07:37about mountains and mountaineering.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40Most were written by men,
0:07:40 > 0:07:42most were driven by the goal of the summit
0:07:42 > 0:07:46and spoke the language of conquest and victory.
0:07:49 > 0:07:51Nan's book stopped me short.
0:07:51 > 0:07:53It was different.
0:07:53 > 0:07:56It was quiet, wise,
0:07:56 > 0:07:58humble, sensuous.
0:07:58 > 0:08:01It was a meditation, not a manifesto.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04It was a pilgrimage and not an attack.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12Reading Nan for the first time, two especially beautiful ideas emerged.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17The first is her notion that we walk not UP mountains but INTO them,
0:08:17 > 0:08:21and therefore that we explore ourselves as we explore them.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24The second was her abandonment of the summit
0:08:24 > 0:08:27as the organising principle of a mountain.
0:08:27 > 0:08:30Nan was more interested in keeping company with the hills -
0:08:30 > 0:08:31in coming to know them,
0:08:31 > 0:08:35in wandering over them, peering into them and lying down on them.
0:08:47 > 0:08:49"So there I lie on the plateau.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55"Under me the central core of fire
0:08:55 > 0:08:58"from which was thrust this grumbling,
0:08:58 > 0:09:00"grinding mass of plutonic rock.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08"Over me blue air and between the fire of the rock
0:09:08 > 0:09:10"and the fire of the sun,
0:09:10 > 0:09:13"scree, soil and water...
0:09:14 > 0:09:16"wind, rain and snow...
0:09:19 > 0:09:20"..the total mountain.
0:09:22 > 0:09:26"Slowly I have found my way in."
0:09:32 > 0:09:37Into and out of these mountains Shepherd went in all seasons,
0:09:37 > 0:09:40by day, dawn, dusk and night.
0:09:41 > 0:09:46Sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or students.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49As she wandered these hills
0:09:49 > 0:09:51or stravaiged them, to use the Scots verb,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55she started to explore them in language as well as in person.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58Poems about the peaks came first.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03And then, slowly, prose,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07written through the years of the Second World War.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11By the summer of 1945 she had completed a version of the book,
0:10:11 > 0:10:14celebrating what she called the "total mountain".
0:10:16 > 0:10:18Shepherd sent the manuscript to her friend,
0:10:18 > 0:10:21and fellow novelist, Neil Gunn.
0:10:21 > 0:10:25Gunn admired the precision of Nan's vision but was sceptical
0:10:25 > 0:10:27about the possibilities of getting it published.
0:10:27 > 0:10:33So it sat gathering dust until, four years before her death,
0:10:33 > 0:10:35Shepherd at last decided to publish it.
0:10:44 > 0:10:46Like the Cairngorm granite at its heart,
0:10:46 > 0:10:49The Living Mountain is a medley of different substances.
0:10:53 > 0:10:56Each chapter mixes field notes, lyrical memoir,
0:10:56 > 0:10:58natural history, oral history,
0:10:58 > 0:11:02and Zennish meditation on the nature of landscape and consciousness.
0:11:08 > 0:11:10It's divided into 12 chapters,
0:11:10 > 0:11:13bound together by rhymes of thought and image...
0:11:14 > 0:11:18..each of which examines a different aspect of Cairngorm life.
0:11:20 > 0:11:22Water.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25Air and Light.
0:11:25 > 0:11:27The Plateau.
0:11:27 > 0:11:29Frost and Snow.
0:11:29 > 0:11:30Man.
0:11:32 > 0:11:34Being.
0:11:35 > 0:11:39Nan needed to find a way to write about fugitive experiences.
0:11:39 > 0:11:43About extreme beauty, about fear, about solitude, about deep time.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47And she did so by devising a style that was astonishingly supple.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50It's witty here, it's lyrical there,
0:11:50 > 0:11:53it's at ease with the theological as well as the geological.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03Shepherd helped me mature as a mountaineer.
0:12:04 > 0:12:08"Beginners", she wrote with a hint of fond scorn,
0:12:08 > 0:12:10"want the startling view,
0:12:10 > 0:12:14"the horrid pinnacle - sips of beer and tea instead of milk."
0:12:19 > 0:12:22Well, Nan made me into a milk drinker.
0:12:22 > 0:12:24Like her fellow Scot John Muir,
0:12:24 > 0:12:28she believed that "going out was really going in", as Muir put it.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32She learned to come to the Cairngorms in search of tininess
0:12:32 > 0:12:33as well as vastness.
0:12:33 > 0:12:36In search of soul as well as soil.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42Shepherd was a brilliant seer.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47She noticed everything.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50Tiny details fascinated her.
0:12:52 > 0:12:53Wherever she looked,
0:12:53 > 0:12:57she perceived subtlety at work in these huge hills.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05"There are the pine roots that are twisted and intertwined
0:13:05 > 0:13:07"like a cage of snakes.
0:13:12 > 0:13:14"The loch currents which weave thousands
0:13:14 > 0:13:18"of floating pine needles into complex spheres...
0:13:20 > 0:13:22"..structures so intricately bound
0:13:22 > 0:13:26"that they can be lifted out of the water and kept for years."
0:13:37 > 0:13:39I love this approach.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42You've got this rising path
0:13:42 > 0:13:48and then you are into this great granite gap, glacier gouged.
0:13:48 > 0:13:50And whenever I pass through here,
0:13:50 > 0:13:54I feel the telltale tingle between my shoulder blades
0:13:54 > 0:13:58which signals the fact I'm passing through a portal
0:13:58 > 0:14:01or a gateway into another kind of country altogether.
0:14:13 > 0:14:15WIND HOWLS
0:14:18 > 0:14:22Well, I'm well over 3,000ft now and the wind is picking up,
0:14:22 > 0:14:24I'm gaining height,
0:14:24 > 0:14:27my spirit is lifting and the temperature is dropping.
0:14:27 > 0:14:29And so is life.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32Everything is just smaller up here.
0:14:32 > 0:14:34It's tough at this height.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42Nan knew how gruelling these mountains could be...
0:14:43 > 0:14:46..the suffering they demanded of the body.
0:14:47 > 0:14:51At times, she takes a Presbyterian pleasure in difficulty.
0:14:56 > 0:14:58"And one toils into the hill.
0:15:01 > 0:15:03"Black scatter of rock...
0:15:04 > 0:15:07"pieces as large as a house.
0:15:09 > 0:15:11"Pieces edged like a grater.
0:15:13 > 0:15:15"A bit of tough going."
0:15:22 > 0:15:24Well, the weather is volatile today,
0:15:24 > 0:15:26there's a big south-easterly
0:15:26 > 0:15:28pushing mist and cloud up out of the Lairig Ghru,
0:15:28 > 0:15:32big vertical buffets of it that are then coming across the plateau.
0:15:33 > 0:15:37There's ice in the puddles and I can't see very much at all.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40Up here, you feel pretty lost in the flatness
0:15:40 > 0:15:42but I am just going to push on
0:15:42 > 0:15:43and see where we get to on the plateau.
0:16:00 > 0:16:03Well, the most amazing thing has just happened.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06As you can see, the wind that was bringing the mist in
0:16:06 > 0:16:11has whipped it away and revealed this mountain magic trick of a view.
0:16:11 > 0:16:15You've got the battleship flanks of Carn a' Mhaim gleaming,
0:16:15 > 0:16:16the meanders of the Dee,
0:16:16 > 0:16:18like a silver snake heading off to the south,
0:16:18 > 0:16:20snow buntings coming over
0:16:20 > 0:16:23and the wind ripping up chunks of snow from the corries
0:16:23 > 0:16:27and flinging them over. It's absolutely breathtaking up here.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37At first glance, this looks like a lunar landscape -
0:16:37 > 0:16:40barren and stripped of life.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44But about half a mile that way is one of the most vital places I know.
0:16:44 > 0:16:48Somewhere that a river springs from deep inside the mountain itself.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56Shepherd believed water to be one of the four elemental mysteries
0:16:56 > 0:16:58of the Cairngorm landscape.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04She called it "that strong white stuff".
0:17:06 > 0:17:09And she wrote of "its flash and gleam,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13"its music, its pliancy and grace".
0:17:16 > 0:17:19Water is all over the Cairngorms in lochs and lochans,
0:17:19 > 0:17:22burns and waterfalls.
0:17:23 > 0:17:28And two of Scotland's great rivers have their origins up here -
0:17:28 > 0:17:30the Avon and the Dee.
0:17:34 > 0:17:36"Water.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39"It wells from the rock and flows away.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44"For unnumbered years it is welled from the rock and flowed away.
0:17:46 > 0:17:50"It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself."
0:17:56 > 0:17:59Shepherd believed that truly to comprehend the power of a river,
0:17:59 > 0:18:01you had to visit its source.
0:18:03 > 0:18:06Well, here I am at the Wells of Dee.
0:18:06 > 0:18:10Except the Wells of Dee isn't one place, it's a thousand places
0:18:10 > 0:18:13where the water just surges up out of the mountain.
0:18:13 > 0:18:16And it gathers in volume and it gathers in pace,
0:18:16 > 0:18:18and eventually it reaches the corrie rim
0:18:18 > 0:18:22and it crashes down as the young Dee a thousand feet into Garbh Choire.
0:18:22 > 0:18:25And when you get to a source of a river,
0:18:25 > 0:18:27a strange strong place like this,
0:18:27 > 0:18:29there's nothing to do but drink a bit of it.
0:18:38 > 0:18:40Well, that tastes of mountain.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52"No-one knows the mountain completely who has not slept on it,"
0:18:52 > 0:18:54wrote Nan.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58I've spent many nights sleeping out on the Cairngorms.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03And each night is different, each one remarkable.
0:19:05 > 0:19:09I've pitched my tent just at the lowest point of Sron na Lairig
0:19:09 > 0:19:12and the Lairig Ghru itself is funnelling quite a gale
0:19:12 > 0:19:14through on to me but I'm happy to be out here.
0:19:14 > 0:19:16The sky above is pretty clear,
0:19:16 > 0:19:19I suspect I may see some stars tonight.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22I remember something Nan wrote about the wind when you sleep out,
0:19:22 > 0:19:26like the boom of crashing seas. Well, I've got that right here.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40"These moments of quiescent perceptiveness before sleep
0:19:40 > 0:19:42"are the most rewarding of the day.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46"As one slips over into sleep,
0:19:46 > 0:19:48"the mind grows limpid...
0:19:49 > 0:19:51"the body melts,
0:19:51 > 0:19:54"perception alone remains."
0:20:01 > 0:20:03GURGLING BIRD CALLS
0:20:06 > 0:20:08Well, it was a pretty cold night
0:20:08 > 0:20:11but this is a very, very special place to wake up
0:20:11 > 0:20:12and I am a happy man.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16There's cloud filling the valley down below like snow,
0:20:16 > 0:20:20you've got this stunning under lighting up the Larig Ghru.
0:20:20 > 0:20:24All around me, behind me, actually 360 degrees,
0:20:24 > 0:20:26I can hear ptarmigan, just...
0:20:26 > 0:20:30They're chirring and they're zithering and they're gurgling.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36To me, it's one of the sounds of the Cairngorms.
0:20:45 > 0:20:47My plan today is to search for
0:20:47 > 0:20:49one of the Cairngorms' least visited
0:20:49 > 0:20:51and most bewitching places.
0:20:54 > 0:20:58En route, I pass close to the edge of Braeriach's mightiest cliffs,
0:20:58 > 0:21:00above Garbh Choire.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04And it was here that Nan somehow,
0:21:04 > 0:21:06while peering over the corrie rim,
0:21:06 > 0:21:08managed to fall asleep.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17"The sun came out and warmed us
0:21:17 > 0:21:21"and the pattern of movement and sound made us drowsy.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27"Then abruptly I awoke and found myself staring down
0:21:27 > 0:21:32"black walls of rock to a bottom incredibly remote.
0:21:34 > 0:21:36"I had looked into the abyss."
0:21:38 > 0:21:40I don't sleep very well at the best of times
0:21:40 > 0:21:44but there's nowhere I'm less likely to fall asleep
0:21:44 > 0:21:46then looking over an edge like this.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49But I can see why Nan wanted to put her head over
0:21:49 > 0:21:51because it is incredible.
0:21:51 > 0:21:54You've got these black walls just rearing up at you,
0:21:54 > 0:21:58rime ice building up on them, and then down below,
0:21:58 > 0:22:011,000ft away in the belly of the corrie,
0:22:01 > 0:22:04you've just got rocks and boulders from millennia down there,
0:22:04 > 0:22:06some of them as big as cars.
0:22:06 > 0:22:09And you've got the clouds moving over the green, way down there.
0:22:09 > 0:22:12It is amazing!
0:22:15 > 0:22:19Although Shepherd spent years walking INTO the Cairngorms,
0:22:19 > 0:22:22she understood that she would never know them completely.
0:22:24 > 0:22:27The capacity of the mountain to keep its secrets
0:22:27 > 0:22:30and to spring surprises always intrigued her.
0:22:31 > 0:22:34And one of those secrets was a tiny body of water,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37tucked under a ring of cliffs,
0:22:37 > 0:22:433,000ft above sea level and miles from the nearest road.
0:22:43 > 0:22:48Loch Coire an Lochain - the loch of the corrie of the little loch.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54Nan writes about how hard this lochan is to find
0:22:54 > 0:22:56and I'm understanding that now.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58I've decided to use water as my guide, though.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01So I've followed this stream down this boulder staircase
0:23:01 > 0:23:04and I've just got my first glimpse of the lochan
0:23:04 > 0:23:08and I'm going to follow this ridge right down to its edge.
0:23:24 > 0:23:26"Climb as often as you will,
0:23:26 > 0:23:29"Loch Coire an Lochain remains incredible.
0:23:31 > 0:23:34"Without knowing one would not guess its presence
0:23:34 > 0:23:37"and certainly not its size.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41"To be so open and yet so secret..."
0:23:44 > 0:23:47The last time I was here, I skied across this loch
0:23:47 > 0:23:52from that point there across this bay - it was frozen solid.
0:23:52 > 0:23:54The time before that, I swam.
0:23:54 > 0:23:56It was 21 degrees and the sun was beating down.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59And this time, I've come along the corrie rim
0:23:59 > 0:24:01and I've looked down and seen the wind rushing over
0:24:01 > 0:24:03and pressing down on the water
0:24:03 > 0:24:05and spreading incredible patterns all over it.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10This is a place of countless moods.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17Nan wrote so memorably of these mountains -
0:24:17 > 0:24:22the shifting combination of rock and air, light and creatures and humans,
0:24:22 > 0:24:25that together make up the Cairngorms.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29And to know the total mountain, Nan thought,
0:24:29 > 0:24:33required not just the brain but all the body's senses.
0:24:33 > 0:24:35And so it is that she writes with extraordinary relish
0:24:35 > 0:24:40about the taste, and the smell, and the sound of the Cairngorms,
0:24:40 > 0:24:44but also about that most intimate and subtle of senses - touch.
0:24:49 > 0:24:52"The whole skin has this delightful sensitivity.
0:24:55 > 0:24:57"It feels the sun,
0:24:57 > 0:24:58"it feels the wind...
0:25:00 > 0:25:04"and it feels water closing on it as one slips under."
0:25:10 > 0:25:13There's a fizz to Nan's writing about the body,
0:25:13 > 0:25:17an unmistakable eroticism at work.
0:25:17 > 0:25:19It's another example of Nan's refusal
0:25:19 > 0:25:22to conform to expectation or convention.
0:25:23 > 0:25:25She was writing at a time and in a culture
0:25:25 > 0:25:27where candour about physical pleasure
0:25:27 > 0:25:30was regarded with real suspicion,
0:25:30 > 0:25:32especially from a woman.
0:25:37 > 0:25:40Until recently, Nan remained relatively little known...
0:25:43 > 0:25:47..her book passed around between hillwalkers and mountain-lovers.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54To my mind, no-one has written as well as Shepherd
0:25:54 > 0:25:57about what it feels like to BE in the mountains.
0:26:00 > 0:26:04JEAN ROGER: You can see why Nan lost herself in it.
0:26:04 > 0:26:08Mountains do have a sort of life of their own,
0:26:08 > 0:26:09a spirit of their own.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13You felt she was sort of part of the mountains.
0:26:13 > 0:26:15She absorbed the spirit.
0:26:19 > 0:26:23The Living Mountain was the last book Nan Shepherd ever wrote.
0:26:28 > 0:26:29She died in 1981
0:26:29 > 0:26:32and it would be years before her work
0:26:32 > 0:26:34came back out of the shadows.
0:26:36 > 0:26:38It always happens, doesn't it?
0:26:38 > 0:26:42You're quite well known, you die, you're forgotten
0:26:42 > 0:26:44and then suddenly they pick you up again.
0:26:44 > 0:26:46And I'm delighted she's getting...
0:26:46 > 0:26:47Oh, I hope she knows.
0:26:47 > 0:26:50She's maybe up on the mountain somewhere watching.
0:26:50 > 0:26:53That'd be nice.
0:26:56 > 0:27:00"In the mountains," Nan writes, "the body may be said to think."
0:27:03 > 0:27:05It's Shepherd's belief in this "bodily thinking"
0:27:05 > 0:27:08that gives The Living Mountain its contemporary relevance.
0:27:11 > 0:27:13Smartphones, screen time, social media.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20More and more of us have less and less contact with the natural world.
0:27:21 > 0:27:25We have come increasingly to forget that our minds are shaped
0:27:25 > 0:27:29by the bodily experience of being in the world.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33By its spaces, sounds, forms, textures.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36We are, literally, losing touch.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43Shepherd saw this loss beginning in her lifetime
0:27:43 > 0:27:47and her book both mourns it and warns against it.
0:27:49 > 0:27:51And walking, for Shepherd,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54was the best way to "live all the way through".
0:27:54 > 0:27:58The beat of the placed and lifted foot, the fall of light,
0:27:58 > 0:28:00the sound of the wind.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04Out on the move in the hills for hour after hour.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09As she wrote, "You walk the flesh transparent."
0:28:19 > 0:28:22"It is a journey into being.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26"For as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain's life,
0:28:26 > 0:28:28"I penetrate also into my own.
0:28:31 > 0:28:34"I am not out of myself but in myself.
0:28:35 > 0:28:41"To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain."
0:28:41 > 0:28:43ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS
0:28:43 > 0:28:47# Send the mountain in a trance
0:28:47 > 0:28:52# Singing springs rejoice and dance
0:28:52 > 0:28:57# Whispering mists cloak the hinds
0:28:59 > 0:29:06# Mind and body shining bright. #
0:29:06 > 0:29:09ACOUSTIC GUITAR BREAK
0:29:13 > 0:29:1750 years ago, they became superstars in astronomy,
0:29:17 > 0:29:19leaders in their fields.
0:29:19 > 0:29:23They represent the most productive period astronomy has ever had.
0:29:23 > 0:29:25And now, they're taking an anniversary trip.
0:29:25 > 0:29:27Hello, everyone, I'm Jimmy Carr.