‘The Living Mountain’

Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain:

Complete ramblings about human interaction with mountain environments.

Coire Bhrochain, Cairngorm mountains.

The mountain is the ultimate symbol of the sublime. Ancient and colossal, they dominate the horizon, shadowing over the landscape in which they stand. The stereotypical imagery that immediately comes to mind in when thinking of mountains from a purely human perspective is that of man conquering the mountain. Kilimanjaro, Everest, the Matterhorn; practically all large mountains have a reputation as a place for human activity, representing nothing more than desolateness and the chance to dominate yet another natural ‘adversary’. Those that are drawn to this promise of a ‘challenge’ to be conquered are more often people who are not local, who have travelled great distances in order to obtain an experience that they feel they cannot achieve elsewhere or by other means. Reaching the summit of a mountain is considered an achievement, and one that is becoming increasingly easier to obtain. Western perception of the mountain as a place for human activity and leisure is problematic on many levels. From an anthropological point of view it is problematic because the increasing amount of people that opt into experiencing extreme mountaineering means that the dangers of the mountain are underestimated. People no longer seem to see mountainous terrain as a place of potential lethality for prospective climbers. Regardless of how many people successfully reach the summit, the mountain is still a dangerous and generally unfamiliar place. Another problem that has arisen thanks to the growing popularity of mountaineering is that the natural environment of mountainous areas have become more and more polluted by the rubbish and waste that is left behind by visitors.

With the increasing number of tourists comes a growing amount of rubbish left behind on mountains: food wrappers, climbing gear, oxygen cylinders, and even the bodies of climbers who died along the way. The frigid temperatures mean trash does not biodegrade.

Infiltration of the natural landscape of the mountainous environment is a terrible issue, and one that is rarely discussed. What is it that drives humankind to seek places of isolation, and to corrupt it with the waste products of civilisation? Maybe this is too harsh a view of the situation, but it cannot be denied that to the human mind, a place that lacks any kind of human settlement equates an environment devoid of life in general. This is of course untrue, and ignores the diversity of natural world and is entirely anthropocentric in its outlook, and yet to ask nearly anyone about the flora and fauna that can be found on various mountain ranges would probably just result in blank stares and half-hearted guess (“mountain lions, right?”).

The decay of natural environments considered ‘hot-spots’ for tourism is becoming well-documented and depressingly common. Consider the destruction of the coral reefs, for example, which is in the unfortunate position of being disrupted by human intervention and yet will almost certainly need some kind of human intervention in order to be protected from disappearing completely from our oceans. This all sounds very preachy, and is probably a massive downer, I know. I can’t say that I’m a perfect conservationist or environmental campaigner, either. I had little knowledge about how the ecosystem of a mountain operates, or about the impact of human visitation upon various mountain ranges until I came to write this post.

Has the commercialisation of the natural world eclipsed the right of the natural world to simply exist for its own sake?

Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain has been described as rejecting the traditional view of the mountain as a place of masculine empowerment over nature, instead focusing on opening a dialogue with the natural world around us. Her ability to see the mountain range as a singular being is not particularly unique, but it does enable her to see the environmental area in which she has entered into as having its own enigmatic identity. The area which she visits is local to her, and she does not enter with any particular goal in mind other than to experience the place fully, to attempt to assimilate her presence into the otherwise otherness of the natural landscape of the Cairngorms.

Shepherd’s approach is wildly different to that of the average modern mountaineer, and of course the environment of the Cairngorms cannot be so easily compared to that of other mountain ranges or environments. Shepherd does attempt a kind of neutrality in her work, an observational distance that shows a great deal of respect for the world around her that, while familiar in many aspects, is also strange and mysterious. The subject of the mountain, as a symbol of the sublime, rejects all notion of the pastoral and Shepherd adheres to this. The landscape that she documents is both vast and wild, although still occasionally intertwined with the human world.

Reading this book did make me think about whether it is possible for everyone wishing to interact with experience the natural world to really go about it the same way as Shepherd. Not everyone is capable of independently accessing these, as the ability to traverse such difficult terrain assumes a degree of bodily ability that very few people actually possess. Ableism is not the only barrier to experiencing mountainous terrain; for much larger mountains, such as Mt. Everest, supplies of oxygen, food, and equipment are needed. Such things are both expensive and also contribute to the mounting debris left by visitors on the mountain.

Is it thus wiser to merely have a fuller experience of the environments local to us, as Nan Shepherd did? Is there any way of applying her experiences to larger scale scenarios? Is it even worth attempting to enter into environments that are otherwise void of human presence? These are difficult questions that cannot be simply answered, and I supposed that it is up to the individual to decide for themselves whether to engage with nature in their own ways. I suppose the ultimate challenge is attempting to give nature itself a viewpoint and an opinion. It is only human to see things from our perspective, after all.