Merryn Glover wasn’t overly impressed when she was first introduced to some of Scotland’s high places more than 30 years ago.
Even in summer, many of those walks were shrouded in cloud and rain. And, of course, midges. Looking back, she recalls she was frequently soaked and miserable and occasionally asked herself why she was putting herself through these experiences.
For somebody born in Nepal, where she had met her husband-to-be Alistair, it could often be a dreich and dismal ordeal. Or at least, until she discovered the splendour of the Cairngorms plateau and was enchanted by their wild majesty and iridescence.
A wild but wonderful place
Soon enough, she read Nan Shepherd’s fabled book The Living Mountain and, as she was increasingly captivated by the “endless fascination” of the region, her initial reservations were swept away. These peaks were her friends and she loved them.
And she has proved that passion by following in Shepherd’s footsteps since becoming the first writer in residence at the Cairngorm National Park in 2019.
She and her colleagues subsequently engaged in a community project called Shared Stories: A Year in the Cairngorms, which involved encouraging as many people as possible to respond to the nature of the park in their own words.
The efferverscent Merryn ran workshops for all ages, from outdoor instructors and rangers to schools and tourists. It proved a hugely rewarding initiative, generating new writing from hundreds of participants which were shared on a website, on myriad banners and in the park authority’s end-of-year anthology.
The park fired her imagination
It also became the stimulus for her new book The Hidden Fires, so it was a significant turning point for the 53-year-old, both as a writer and on a personal level.
As she explained this week: “It was a kind of planting of a flag, a metaphoric scratching of my name on the Cairngorms granite. If I can be writer in residence here, if Scotland is my home, then perhaps I belong.”
Merryn has previously written a brace of novels, A House Called Askival, based in India, and Of Stone and Sky, set in Badenoch, where she now lives.
But this new work is something more spiritual and it’s billed as “A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd”. And while the latter may have died in Aberdeen in 1981, it’s obvious her presence still permeates the mountains where she was in her element.
She was the perfect companion
Certainly, Merryn thinks it would have pleased Nan to discover that “she became for me what she called ‘the perfect hill companion”.
She said: “I am deeply thankful to her for paving that route”.
The Hidden Fires will be published by Polygon in March.
