Shepherd punningly calls such mountain illusions ‘mis-spellings’: visual ‘errors’ that possess an accidental magic and offer unlooked-for revelation. She delights in these moments, rather than holding them in suspicion or correcting for them: Such illusions, depending on how the eye is placed and used, drive home the truth that our habitual vision of things is not necessarily right: it is only one of an infinite number, and to glimpse an unfamiliar one, even for a moment, unmakes us, but steadies us again.
