Driving along a highway.
I lean toward the window, looking out at the clear sky. Gazing down onto the thousands and thousands of trees lining the road. A house here and there. A river. Some back roads branching off the main one. My eyes drift back up to the sky. We turn, and the sun is in my eyes. That same sun shined down onto this very location, hundreds of years ago, but I'm certain it looked very different.
I try to imagine what this area would look like a long time ago. I subtract the highway, the houses, the driveways, the power lines, the bridges....
Since there were lots of trees by the road, I assume this used to be a huge forest. I imagine the ground covered in shadow from the trees, with little shafts of sunlight poking through here and there. Just a vast endless universe of trees.
When I was younger, we were driving into town during the winter. It had snowed recently, and the huge hills by the highway were covered in snow. As we drove past I saw some kids sledding down the really big one by the overpass. A year later, the tracks from the sled are still cut into the hill.
Today, more than a few years later, they're still there. Barely detectable, but still there.
Not even a year ago there was a crowd of trees by that overpass, opposite the hill. A few months ago I noticed the trees disappearing farther and farther back along the highway under the overpass, and bulldozers were there. I wondered why they did that.
But when there was a frost that time, it looked like it had snowed down there.
I never saw those kids sledding down that hill ever again, even though it snowed more than usual last year.
Sometimes, instead of thinking about what it looked like in the past, I'll think ahead instead. Hundreds of years from now, this place could turn into a desert. It could be flooded with water. It could be uninhabited. All the trees could be gone, the place could be an industrial wasteland. We could all be dead.
I don't know.
