MOUNTAINS
With the word MOUNTAINS, the third session on Monday 1 December 2025, 5-6pm, FAB4.78 will be led by Dr Thomas Simpson, Reader in Environmental History, who will introduce a short pre-circulated textLink opens in a new window to open the conversation. Here’s a brief description of the text chosen by Dr Simpson for the session:
Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) was a Scottish writer and lecturer at the Aberdeen College of Education. The Living Mountain was published in 1977, some three decades after its composition. Championed by a recent generation of nature writers including Robert Macfarlane and reissued in multiple editions, it has in the past fifteen years reached a far wider readership than before. Shepherd takes seriously the aspiration of the Falling Skies research group to attend to 'the animatedness of words', and her book offers what I hope will be productive provocations on knowing and being among the rocks, flora, fauna, and airs of the Cairngorm mountains.