How Old Is the Countryside?

by Robert

The Old Men of Moccas give me a tangible feeling of how old the countryside is. We gaily toss about words like Medieval and Neolithic, and hundreds of years run off our tongues like grams in a cake recipe. But these old, old trees, fuller of dead wood than live, sitting there, growing by tiny rings each year or perhaps dying a little bit more than growing, give a real visual experience to the word ‘age’. And when I saw the ridge and furrow under their feet I had some tangible idea of just how long ago it was that those men and oxen made those ridges and furrows.

— Patrick Whitefield, How to Read the Landscape