Deep time opens into the future as well as the past

Deep time is the dizzying expanses of Earth history that stretch away from the present moment. Deep time is measured in units that humble the human instant: epochs and aeons, instead of minutes and years. Deep time is kept by stone, ice, stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates. Deep time opens into the future as well as the past.

 

Robert Macfarlane, Underland (Hamish Hamilton, 2019) p. 15