In the Cairngorms

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 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.