I got up this morning to a startling and truly exceptional experience. After our customary tea in bed, accompanying the daily crossword puzzle, I drew back the bedroom curtains to a sight that was genuinely astonishing.
Overnight there had been an appreciable fall of snow, but evidently little or no wind. There was a perfectly blue sky, and the bright, early-morning sun was bathing everything in a warm, golden light. Evidently there had been a period of freezing rain before the snow swept in properly, so that the tip of every twig bore a clear diamond of ice. The whole picture was animated by the activity of the birds, whose movements shook curtains of snow crystals from the branches, which caught the rays of the sun.
Rarely have I encountered such a scene of natural beauty, and equally rarely one that came upon me with such a dramatic impact. Into my mind came an experience in my late teens, on my first visit to the Isle of Mull, off the coast of Scotland. Darkness had fallen by the time we reached the place for our first camp, on the beach next to the village of Gruline. When I opened the tent flap the next morning, to brilliant sunshine, the length of Loch Keal extended in front of me to the small islands of Eorsa and Inch Kenneth. I remember clearly that I shouted for sheer joy. My response this morning was a little more restrained, but that was due no doubt to the more than half a century that has elapsed since my trip to Mull. I admit that I did gasp with the pleasure and wonderment of the experience.
As I understand it, the eighteenth century idea of “the sublime” was intended to identify an experience that went beyond mere “beauty”, and that an essential component of that experience had to be one of awe. Taking a walk in the sunshine, up the Avenue, later in the morning, I came to the conclusion that the word “sublime” was probably the one for which I had been looking.