As I chopped my first tree down it was wonderful to realise that – of course – counting the rings would tell me how old it was. Traversing through the layers of wood and so through time is one of the ways in which trees stimulate the imagination. As with wood, so with woodland. Layers of life… Continue reading Wooden layers through time
Category: England
Paths across the Cheshire Peak
Driving west across the edge of the English Peak District is a good way to see how geology shapes landscape. Tracing the routes that cross it – feeling their shapes with a finger on a map or with your body as the car swings round bends – hints at how they are shaped by the landscape beneath,… Continue reading Paths across the Cheshire Peak
BRITICE-CHRONO: death of an ice sheet
Using many different techniques, dozens of scientists are studying the death of an ice sheet that once covered Britain and Ireland. They want to understand the future fate of modern-day ice. The phrase “ice sheet” doesn’t do justice to our subject: this is not something you shatter when stepping on a frozen puddle. Covering over… Continue reading BRITICE-CHRONO: death of an ice sheet
Traces of glacial ice and water
There’s an immediacy to the study of the Quaternary (the last few million years) that is rather seductive. Most geology is (after John McPhee) studying ‘the former world’ but the Quaternary is close enough in time that it is still this world, capped by ice and full of familiar animals and human beings. We can… Continue reading Traces of glacial ice and water