1940s masterpiece of nature writing.
Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain is about the Cairgorm Mountains. It was written in the 1940s, it is very short, and it is a masterpiece. I don't tend to use the word masterpiece lightly.
Shepherd's writing is poetic, but don't let that put you off. She had a way with words—[of a mountain loch:] "I know its depth, though not in feet"—and she had a way of noticing things that we have all seen, but never actually noticed: "[Rowan] grows here and there among birches and firs, as a rule singly, and sometimes higher than either, a solitary bush by the rivulet in a ravine." It is fantastic stuff.
Just read this book, basically.
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On the Origin of Species
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