Underland: A Deep Time Journey

by Robert Macfarlane

‘Does it change the way the world feels?’ I ask him. ‘Knowing that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second, that countless such particles perforate our brains and hearts? Does it change the way you feel about matter – about what matters? Are you surprised we don’t fall through each surface of our world at every step, push through it with every touch?’ Christopher nods. He thinks. His screensaver changes to the limestone towers at Guilin, seen near dusk such that they are backlit in ways that are considered widely appealing on Instagram and other large-scale image-sharing platforms. ‘At the weekends,’ Christopher says, ‘when I’m out for a walk with my wife, along the cliff tops near here, on a sunny day, I know our bodies are wide-meshed nets, and that the cliffs we’re walking on are nets too, and sometimes it seems, yes, as miraculous as if in our everyday world we suddenly found ourselves walking on water, or air. And I wonder what it must be like, sometimes, not to know that.’ He pauses, and it is clear that he is thinking now beyond the confines of the salt cavern, beyond even the known limits of the universe. ‘But mostly, and in several ways, I’m amazed I’m able to hold the hand of the person I love.’