History in the landscape

Nimue Brown

Dec 15

(Nimue)

The hills around my home are made of Jurassic limestone. It's hard to think about the scales of time this involves. When I walk I often find fossils. Bits of sealife from the ancient past, held in rock, and from which these hills have grown. The enormity of time involved in going from that Jurassic shore to the modern Cotswold edge defies my ability to think about time. I could dig the numbers out, but I don't think humans have it in us to comprehend millions of years as anything more than abstract ideas.

Every landscape is the product of time. Human activity is often present at the surface. For humans, things humans have done in a place in the last few thousand years are impactful. In geological terms, this is barely the blink of an eye. We forget how small and fleeting we are. It's good to put ourselves in perspective.

Housing estates often hold the shapes of old fields, or the road names and place names may carry some sense of what was there before. The past can be surprisingly present when you start looking for it. This is the sort of thing you can do when the opportunity arises. It gives a lot without having to make a big or sustained time commitment. If you're looking for human history in the landscape, maps can be really helpful. I use ordnance survey a lot because those show ancient sites. Online maps are good if you can access them on a phone to find out what you are seeing.

Wherever you find yourself, it's worth taking a few moments to look for signs of history. Landscape history is a fascinating thing to get into, and if you have local landscape historians that can be so rewarding to explore. The internet is great for finding information about history in the landscape, and you may find local resources available to you.

Having a sense of your geological history is good, too. There's a lot to be gained from just knowing what kind of terrain you are on and how it formed. Again you can pick up a lot without having to make a huge time investment.

These are effective ways of deepening your relationships with the land, and with ancestors of place. It can form a good basis for excursions, meditations, photography and other creative responses. It's a good thing to take on as a lay Druid because it gives a lot of relationship for relatively small time investments, and you can pick it up and put it down as you need to - it doesn't need high levels of commitment or any real continuity of practice, you can just explore things when it suits you to do so.