We all carry trace fossils within us

We all carry trace fossils within us – the marks that the dead and the missed leave behind. handwriting on an envelope; the wear on a wooden step left by footfall; the memory of a familiar gesture by someone gone, repeated so often it has worn its own groove in both air and mind: these are trace fossils too. Sometimes, in fact, all that is left behind by loss is trace – and sometimes empty volume can be easier to hold in the heart than presence itself.

 

Robert Macfarlane, Underland (Hamish Hamilton, 2019) p. 79