(Nimue)
I live on Jurassic limestone, so my non-human ancestors of place include a great deal of sealife. They're unthinkably old. I can't really process the time in a meaningful way. The land here is made of ancient life, and the hills are full of it. As the limestone also gets into the water I tend to feel that these ancient creatures are also in my bones, and part of me.
I've always been interested in fossils. Walking as a child involved a lot of scrutiny of the ground. I grew up in an area with a lot of seashells, ammonites and belemnites. Around Stroud I've also found seaweed, sea urchins and crabs. I get particularly excited about sea urchins.
Stroud has been many things in the distant past. It was at the edge of the ice sheet during the last Ice Age, which is a notion I find powerful and compelling.
Ancestors of place don't have to be human. If there's something present in the land that speaks to you, then it speaks. The past forms our landscapes physically, our topsoil is laid down in layers of history, our trees grow their rings year by year. Human ancestors impact on the land, but not so much as other forces and presences will have done over time.
Thinking about ancestors of place is a wonderful opportunity to open up beyond a human-centric perception and see our place in the world as one that has been shaped by many different kinds of influences.
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