Rudyard Kipling once saw the Taj Mahal from a train window and it was so beautiful that he vowed never to go closer: nothing could equal that vision.
Since I was a teenager, I've dreamed of the islands off the coast of Scotland:
*the Orkneys as they were described in THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING by TH White (a tall stone tower castle surrounded by sea and wind)
*Iona as it looked in the film CIVILIZATION by Kenneth Clark -- again, a tower, but this one surrounded by wildflowers and wind
*a small island in the Hebrides as John MacPhee described it in the NEW YORKER--he lived there for a year, there was nothing commercial on the island except a combination of Post Office and shop, labeled with a card on the door that said "The Shop"
*another island in the Hebrides as described by Josephine Tey, one of my favorite authors, in THE SINGING SANDS -- it rains, the wind literally knocks the hero down, he comes back to his hotel really hungry and wonders what they'll give him for dinner.
He wouldn't turn up his nose at a piece of grilled sea trout, if it turned out to be that. Grilled with local butter. But he hoped for lobster --the island was famous for its lobsters -- and failing that, some herring fresh from the sea, split, and fried after being dipped in oatmeal..
His first meal in the isles of delight consisted of a couple of bright orange kippers cured and liberally dyed in Aberdeen, bread made in Glasgow...the only local produce was a pallid, haggis-shaped mound of crowdie, a white crumbly byproduct without smell or taste
Even though the wind has knocked him down, there's no fresh air in his room because the window won't open -- and the hero lies in his bed and laughs and laughs, for the first time in months. Other things happen and the trip turns out to be wonderful (and the island beautiful), despite the weather and the food.
*not an island (though I thought for a long time that it had been filmed on the Isle of Skye) but the village and landscape in the movie LOCAL HERO -- houses huddled by the sea, green field, no trees, white sandy beaches that go on for miles and miles.
This landscape has dominated my imagination all my life. Almost every day, I've imagined being there, in the Northern light I love and have experienced elsewhere, with the wind and the sea and the grass (I love those open landscapes) and sometimes cliffs or white beaches and whatever else is around....in some places, villages by the sea where every house is a different color (as the houses in New England were until the Greek Revival when everything got painted white).
But I've never been. Once, I had a trip all planned -- and then Blow Out the Moon was accepted and needed rewriting, so I didn't go.
Now, I AM going. At this moment, I'm more scared than excited -- WILL it be as I imagine? Probably not. For one thing, in my imagination, it's sunny-- and I know from reading and other people that it rains almost every day: one island had only 18 days without rain in a year! It may be hard to get to some islands-- there may be long waits at ferry and train stations, missed boats, hotels that are a long walk from where I land (and what I will really object to, more expensive: but it's silly to make reservations because I won't really know when I'll arrive, since when the weather is bad the ferries don't go). But that's not what worries me: I'm like Kipling, except that he saw the Taj Mahal from a train and I've seen these places in my mind's eye and on film.
But it's better to find out what they're really like -- and I hope that even if they're very different from what I'm imagining, they will be wonderful. And (this just occurred to me as I was writing this post!) even if it isn't, I will always have my imagined version. Maybe I'll even write about it someday, or the new reality the trip gives me.
In the meantime, I'll post what I do see here in
nice blog.