MACFARLANE, Robert

Underland: A Deep Time Journey

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We have entered a contested frontier region – part of the Julian March, the name given to the border zone of what are now Italy,Slovenia, Croatia and even Carinthia. Cultures and languages have mingled productively here, but this is also where groups perceiving themselves to be of different ethnic or national identities have visited appalling persecutions upon one another. Traces of conflict are still scored into the physical terrain (trenches, mass graves, monuments), archiving and perpetuating a modern human geography of violence and displacement.

We climb higher. The reflected light off the sea still silvers the sky to our south. There are cheerily coloured beehives, ranged in rows in fields set back from the road. Wild-flower meadows, small vineyards.

We cross a wide pass between high peaks. Beech and pine have thickened in the lower ground, and I can smell resin in the cooler air. A sense of mountain communities and forest wilderness grows. The extent of the woods here makes a nonsense of human frontier lines. Beeches march over borders.

Dapple of shade. Pools of light. A glade, a meadow, a hut.

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