Coffee Table Books

I suppose that I have always been cynically arrogant about coffee table books, regarding them as full of so much frippery and fuller still of banal celebrity whether that be ostentatious furniture or postulating poseurs.  Shallow as bird baths, caption filled coloured glossiness , a glimpse at the picture and flick to the next page, kind of experience. But lately, Dear Reader, I have had a change of opinion. What prompted this? Well, glancing through our bookshelves, I came across just such a book called ‘High Light: A Vision of Wild Scotland” by acclaimed photographer, Colin Prior,’ coffee table’ written all over it.  It is full of photographs of hills and lochs and coastlines, in all seasons, in all weathers, blazing sunsets, snowy dustings on rocky crags, summer blazes of heather on moor, solitary Scots pines, deciduous woodlands, foxgloves, ubiquitous stunning  feasts for the eyes .  There are places in this book which I have visited, there are scenes in this volume which I would like to visit.

So I curled up on the couch and picked it up. I decided that I was not going to flick through the pages like a patient in a doctor’s waiting room. Nope, I was resolved to take my time. I was going to contemplate each picture. If it was a long deserted beach of white sand, I was going to imagine the smell of the tangle and the brine, I was going to hear the crash of the waves, feel the breeze on my cheeks and see the grasses blowing in the dunes. I would be bare footed and walking on the sands, sometimes wet, sometimes dry, sometimes flat, sometimes sliding underfoot as I climbed to the top of a dune. If it was a steep path up a mountain scree slope, I would feel the stone underneath my booted foot, sense the burn in my leg muscles, feel the sweat on my brow and reach the top and drink from my water bottle and munch on the granola bar. From there I would view the sun on the southern cirques, the shadows on the northern coires. The snow would crunch underfoot as I viewed the sun setting in the west behind near distant peaks, over short stretches of water to islands shimmering mysteriously in the distance.  The steep descent would be cautious and steady, slow progress and sure footedness. Finally there would be the last haul to the car park and warmth and the short drive to tent or pub.

Looking at the pictures, I reflected that I was a lucky man because here I was looking at familiar scenes from the comfort of my couch, not getting wet, avoiding the cold, not being eaten alive by midgies, with no tired limbs, no breathless perspiration. All was luxuriant laziness. If I had had enough of it I could lay aside my book, maybe have a nap or make a cuppa tea and continue my entranced romanticism in the process. The reality was that I did not have to get to the top of a peak nor battle against a rainy squall to get back to my tent before dark.  I had the best of many worlds, pictures and memories without the physical exertion, thoughts and dreams without the struggle to reach a real destination. I could put the book down and roll over.

And yet, Dear Reader, I think that you know where I am going with this.  And yet, during those moments of idle reflection, I would have given my eye teeth for the struggle and the hardship of the real.  In those moments I would have set aside my picture book for the actual destination on the page.  The sensation of crawling into a sleeping bag while the rain pattered on the tent and the wind ruffled the canvas, with pleasantly weary legs that had tramped uphill and down glen, with eyes that had seen, ears that had heard, nose that had smelt; with the deep, deep satisfaction of  being and doing all that a picture cannot. Human beings are designed for the joy of movement, fitted for the turning of an unknown corner to feast their eyes on a new scene, we are meant to have a child’s curiosity. We are not meant, in the words of Tennyson, ‘to rust unburnished, not to shine in use’.  In the introduction to his book, Colin Prior quotes T.S. Eliot,

“Where is the knowledge we have lost to information.”

I set aside his book and went for a walk.