Location: Glasgow Women’s Library
Last night I was looking for a Robert Macfarlane book on my bookshelf (given to me by none other than my partner in crime B Jorgensen) which I knew was about walking. On the very first page, there was a quote by Nan Shepherd that read something like ‘my eyes are on the soles of my feet’. I put the Macfarlane book aside and decided to read the Shepherd’s book ‘The Living Mountain’.
Action: Reading the Living Mountain.
What Nan Shepherd describes in her book, feels like a pilgrimage without a destination. When reading the Living Mountain, the same sensation swaddles my heart space as when I read Rumi poetry and the Quran. She writes “the mountain gives itself more completely … when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him”.She describes a relationship which is less about summits and reaching the top and more about being-with and being-together.
End: there is no end, only the “traffic of love”.
