Wandering past

This section is about the journeys that others have made before us and the impressions they left behind some leaving traces close to the physical route we are taking today and some who consciously shared stories of their world and our world that have survived, some miraculously for centuries, to reach our own present time intact.

Leaving impressions behind

Even before we started telling each other stories we left our unconscious impressions behind. Like every animal wandering in search of the next source of water or food leaving its muddy prints behind. The earliest human footprints found so far, on the earth of “England”, were in mud by the River Thames 8000 centuries ago when it was about 30 miles further north in Norfolk and we were wandering after animals and seeking shelter in caves in gaps between coldest centuries of ice ages.

Perhaps the people that left those prints also carved or drew pictures on the ground or on trees or the rocks they passed by to say “we woz ere” like we still do today but maybe we will never know. We do know that in some parts of the world protected from the weather we have consciously been making hand prints to leave our impressions behind since at least 400 centuries ago.

And its not just child like hands and feet we left behind. We also told picture book stories of the animals we depended on in beautiful pictures that have survived for tens of thousands of years like these left in the caves of France and Spain at a time when the land around Cambrdige was still emerging from the ice.

As we wander across the the ground on this particular day, we may leave traces behind. Perhaps our footprints will survive if we unwittingly tread on some setting concrete or inadvertantly drop some durable litter that dodges the decaying arrow of time. We may pass tokens of affection left by others who passed this way and now stretched by the living bark of ancient trees, but like many before us we don’t intend to leave that much to last that far behind.