(Nimue)
Sometimes I look at a landscape and have a sudden sense of what it would have been like at a previous time. Recently in Shropshire having an intense sense of a landscape carved out by glaciers brought this to the forefront of my mind. While sometimes it happens for me in an unconsidered woo-woo sort of way, it is also territory worth exploring deliberately.
I try to see the shape of the land under the human constructions. I particularly try to see how roads have changed and distorted the landscape. I try to see where the water should have been, and in low areas, where there should have been marshes.
Sometimes place names give clues as to what was there before. The 'ley' ending of a place name indicates a clearing in a wood, and all too often is all that remains of the wood. Mere indicates marsh. Names with 'cran' in them indicate that once there were a lot of cranes in the area. Street names often reference the habitats that were destroyed to build them.
Knowing the history of a landscape makes it easier to look at it and see what has changed over time. It's a good way of connecting with a place.
History is easier to read when there are human expressions of it. Buildings have their eras, and once you know what you're looking at, buildings can tell you a lot about the past of a place. The one that always makes me wince is finding in villages houses with such names as 'The Old Bakery' and 'The Old Forge.' Where once there was a way of life and a community, now there are only houses for the affluent.
In the woo-woo moments I see what was there before. I see skies that had a lot more birds in them. I see the loss far more than I see anything that suggests progress to me. I don't know whether I'm seeing something that has a reality to it, or whether my brain is just plugging in what I know about history in landscapes. I've not seen anything wildly dramatic, and that encourages me to think the experiences are genuine and that some landscapes contain ghosts of their former selves.
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