The Total Mountain: Nan Shepherd and the Virtual Qualities of Landscape

The work of author Nan Shepherd explores the relationships between nature, culture, landscape, and body. Increasingly regarded as an important figure in early 20th-century Scottish literature for her poetry and fiction, Shepherd’s work received renewed attention following the re-publication (in 2009) of her nonfiction treatise The Living Mountain, and its celebration by writers such as Robert MacFarlane. A meditation on place that draws upon experiences of the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland, Shepherd explores the different ways in which the environment and body meet, affording multiple ‘ways in’ to the plateau. This chapter develops her notion of ‘the total mountain,’ introduced within The Living Mountain, as a concept figuring the ‘virtual’ in an ontology and epistemology of landscape: always excessive and alive with potential