Awe

Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.

For several minutes no one spoke; I think they must each have been as overcome by awe as was I. All about us was a flora and fauna as strange and wonderful to us as might have been those upon a distant planet had we suddenly been miraculously transported through ether to an unknown world.

In 1825, the first public railway carried passengers across the English countryside, setting in motion not just an engineering revolution, but an industrial one too. Imagine the awe and excitement of those first passengers as they boarded the train, unaware that they were witnessing the dawn of a new era.

That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.

While a sense of outrage is the only rational response to atrocity, if that outrage is maintained at too high a level over too long a time it can generate feelings of impotence, as we permit ourselves to be awed by this irrational act of violence.

For nearly four miles, between Loch Awe and Taynuilt, the Callander and Oban section of the L.M.S.R. runs through the Pass of Brander, on the lower slopes of Ben Cruachan, beside the swift-flowing River Awe.