The geography of nowhere.

I live in the Chilterns, which is a crescent of wooded hills and valleys in South East England. Mica lived there too, though in Mica’s time there would have been no trees higher than about thirty centimetres. The windy hills would mostly have been covered with rustling grass.

 The temperature wouldn’t have got much above freezing until May.

 In my mind I placed Mica and her family in the valley where I live now, but time has erased almost every trace of Mica’s world.

 When the wind gusts fiercely, though, I still find myself listening for the tread of heavy mammoth feet and for the sounds of the Neanderthal hunters making their way through the grass.

What traces of the deep past can be felt in the place where you live?