Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) was a Scottish writer, educator, and poet. An intrepid hiker throughout her life, she spent hundreds of days and journeyed countless miles on foot in the Caingorms of Scotland. She published three novels—The QuarryWood, The Weatherhouse, and A Pass in the Grampians—and a volume of poetry—In the Cairngorms—in an extraordinary six-year burst between 1928 and 1934. After a period of creative silence, she composed The Living Mountain during the Second World War. However, the manuscript was stashed away in a drawer for nearly four decades before its publication in 1977.