Beach Footprints Quotes

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

A long walk. A very long walk. Sand between my toes. The rough surf at times reaching and washing away my footprints. About a mile down the beach, I sat down and started thinking back through everything Vance had told me so far. Thought about what my next moves would be. Seeing the Asian guy tomorrow and having him snoop would settle one thing in my mind. Did Vance do it or not? Crucial. Until I knew that, I didn’t want to go any further.

I still feel like a castaway, th elast of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. Myself, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry.

Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed

One night I dreamed a dream. I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord. When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma. "Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me." He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.

Turning one more time to face the sun, my eyes dropped to the golden sand. And then my heart filled with such impossible light when I whispered, “Look, Rune. Look at your footprints in the sand.” Rune’s eyes left mine to observe the beach. His breath caught and his gaze came back to me. Lip quivering, I whispered, “You carried me. In my hardest times, when I couldn’t walk … you carried me through.” “Always,” Rune managed to reply hoarsely. “Forever always.

Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?

...I lived for those long casual walks down the beach and the sight of her small footprints in the glistening wet sand...

Normally, her mind was like a busy beach - all day long she would run back and forth, leaving footprints, building small mounds and castles, writing out ideas and diagrams with her fingers in the sand, but when the night tide came in, she would close her eyes and allow each wave of rhythmic breath to wash in and out over her day's accumulation, and before long the beach would be clear and empty, and she would drift off to sleep.

It’s amazing how easily someone can leave your life. It’s standing on a beach and stepping back to see the hole of your footprint subsumed by the sand and the sea as if it were never there. Grief, it turns out, is a lot like a one-sided video conversation on an iPad. It’s the call with no response, the echo of affection, the shadow cast by love. But just because you can’t see it anymore doesn’t make it any less real.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord, You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach. In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater.

Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

We’re all footprints on a beach. The tide comes through and you were never there.

The beach was empty, no footprints in the sand, and yet they were all there: the dead, the night and the sea. The sea offered her a song of bravery and love. It came from a long way away, as if someone somewhere in the world had sung it many years ago, for those on the shore who didn't dare to take the plunge.

We'll drive backwards in what will become your new car to the beach where we first slept side by side. The green waves will go back into the ocean, yellow and blue. You'll pull up my underwear. I'll button your shirt. We'll dress and dress and dress. Then we'll step into our footprints and erase our trail.

We live in a strange world, where we think we can buy or build our way out of a crisis that has been created by buying and building things. Where a football game or a film gala gets more media attention than the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Where celebrities, film and pop stars who have stood up against all injustices will not stand up for our environment and for climate justice because that would inflict on their right to fly around the world visiting their favourite restaurants, beaches and yoga retreats.

Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the Nice Carnival Song, an echo of last year's vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her. In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world's dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony.

It was freezing, but the cold effortlessly numbed my feet and aching hands. I walked quietly, barefoot, to the end of the block, leaving my shoes behind to remind me how to find my way home. I stood at the end of the street, catching snow in my mouth, and laughed softly to myself as I realized that without my insomnia and anxiety and pain I’d never have been awake to see the city that never sleeps asleep and blanketed up for winter. I smiled and felt silly, but in the best possible way. As I turned and looked back toward the hotel I noticed that my footprints leading out into the city were mismatched. One side was glistening, small and white. The other was misshapen from my limp and each heel was pooled with spots of bright red blood. It struck me as a metaphor for my life. One side light and magical. Always seeing the good. Lucky. The other side bloodied, stumbling. Never quite able to keep up. It was like the Jesus-beach-footprint-in-the-sand poem, except with less Jesus and more bleeding. It was my life, there in white and red. And I was grateful for it. “Um, miss?” It was the man from the front desk leaning tentatively out of the front door with a concerned look on his face. “Coming,” I said. I felt a bit foolish and considered trying to clarify but then thought better of it. There was no way to explain to this stranger how my mental illness had just gifted me with a magical moment. I realized it would have sounded a bit crazy, but that made sense. After all, I was a bit crazy. And I didn’t even have to pretend to be good at it. I was a damn natural.

In the damp sand, the footprints of two men arc from the beached boat to the stairway

He walked the beach the same as before, a single set of footprints praying for the Sun to rise. The whispering Ocean assured him it would all come, a promise to rise and wipe the memories away.

My constant companions were fears, not God. I convinced myself he was simply on vacation, out carrying someone else on that beach with all the footprints. My heart had shriveled, and my soul was as wrinkled

Designer Kisses" I’m glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab, and the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge over your molars, how droll. Love by a graveyard is redundant, but the skin is an obstacle course like Miami where we are inescapably consigned: tourists keeping the views new. What as yet we desire, our own fonts of adoration. By morning, we’re laid out like liquid timepieces, each other’s exercise in perpetual enchantment, for there is that beach in us that is untranslatable; footprints abound. I understand: you’re at a clothes rack at Saks lifting a white linen blouse at tear’s edge wondering.

I feel strange. Nothing’s resolved. You can’t fix the past. But still— It’s like the memory—at least this one—was the beach at the end of the day, messy with piles of sand and holes and footprints—and now it’s the morning, and it’s all still there, but smoothed out. For now. Nothing’s made right—you can’t change the past—but somehow, something has still been remade.

Turning one more time to face the sun, my eyes dropped to the golden sand. And then my heart filled with such impossible light when I whispered, “Look, Rune. Look at your footprints in the sand.” Rune’s eyes left mine to observe the beach. His breath caught and his gaze came back to me. Lip quivering, I whispered, “You carried me. In my hardest times, when I couldn’t walk … you carried me through.” “Always,” Rune managed to reply hoarsely. “Forever always.” Taking a deep breath, I laid my head against his chest and hushed out, “Take me home, baby.

As they’re walking on the beach, in the dark sky above the person’s life is played out for them to see. As each scene is played, like a movie reel, the person notices that two sets of footprints were left in the sand behind them. And as they continued, every new scene brought with it a trail of their footprints.” Poppy’s attention honed in on our footprints. “When all the scenes had been played, the person looks back on the trail of footprints and notices something strange. They notice that during the saddest, or most despairing times of their life, there was only one set of footprints. For happier times there was always two sets.” My eyebrows furrowed, wondering where the story was headed. Poppy lifted her chin and blinked in the bright glare of the sun. With watery eyes, she looked at me and continued. “The person is really troubled by this. The Lord said that, when a person dedicates their life to Him, He would walk with them through all the ups and downs. The person then asked the Lord: why, at the worst points of their life, did He abandon them? Why did He leave?” An expression of deep comfort washed over Poppy’s face. “And what?” I prompted. “What does the Lord say?” A single tear fell from her eye. “He tells the person that He had walked with them their whole life through. But, He explains, the times where there is only a single set of footprints were not when He walked beside them, but instead, when He carried them.

The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens? Guilty

And now she finally understands what she has always observed on people's faces when they are at the seaside. Years ago, ... she would notice how people's faces turned slightly upward when they stared at the sea, as if they were straining to see a trace of God or were hearing the silent humming of the universe; she would notice how, at the beach, people's faces became soft and wistful, reminding her of the expressions on the faces of the sweet old dogs that roamed the streets of Bombay. As if they were all sniffing the salty air for transcendence, for something that would allow them to escape the familiar prisons of their own skin. In the temples and the shrines, their heads were bowed and their faces small, fearful, and respectful, shrunk into insignificance by the ritualized chanting of the priests. But when they gazed at the sea, people held their heads up, and their faces became curious and open, as if they were searching for something that linked them to the sun and the stars, looking for that something they knew would linger long after the wind had erased their footprints in the dust. Land could be bought, sold, owned, divided, claimed, trampled, and fought over. The land was stained permanently with pools of blood; it bulged and swelled under the outlines of the countless millions buried under it. But the sea was unspoiled and eternal and seemingly beyond human claim. Its waters rose and swallowed up the scarlet shame of spilled blood.

As they’re walking on the beach, in the dark sky above the person’s life is played out for them to see. As each scene is played, like a movie reel, the person notices that two sets of footprints were left in the sand behind them. And as they continued, every new scene brought with it a trail of their footprints.” Poppy’s attention honed in on our footprints. “When all the scenes had been played, the person looks back on the trail of footprints and notices something strange. They notice that during the saddest, or most despairing times of their life, there was only one set of footprints. For happier times there was always two sets.” My eyebrows furrowed, wondering where the story was headed. Poppy lifted her chin and blinked in the bright glare of the sun. With watery eyes, she looked at me and continued. “The person is really troubled by this. The Lord said that, when a person dedicates their life to Him, He would walk with them through all the ups and downs. The person then asked the Lord: why, at the worst points of their life, did He abandon them? Why did He leave?” An expression of deep comfort washed over Poppy’s face. “And what?” I prompted. “What does the Lord say?” A single tear fell from her eye. “He tells the person that He had walked with them their whole life through. But, He explains, the times where there is only a single set of footprints were not when He walked beside them, but instead, when He carried them.” Poppy sniffed and said, “I don’t care if you’re not religious, Rune. The poem is not only for the faithful. We all have people who carry us through the worst of times, the saddest of times, the times that seem impossible to break free from. In one way or another, whether it’s through the Lord or a loved one or both, when we feel like we can’t walk on anymore, someone swoops in to help us … someone carries us through.” Poppy rested her head on my chest, wrapping herself

We'll drive backwards in what will become your new car to the beach where we first slept side by side. The green waves will go back into the ocean, yellow and blue. You'll pull up my underwear. I'll button your shirt. We'll dress and dress and dress. Then we'll step into our footprints and erase our trail.

One night a man dreamt that he was walking along the beach with God. Scenes from his life flashed in the sky as they walked. For each scene, the man noticed two sets of footprints (his and God’s) in the sand. On careful observation, he noticed that there was only one set of footprints at the saddest times of his life. He asked: God, why did You abandon me when I needed You most?’ God whispered, ‘My son, I was carrying you during the saddest times of your life; hence your footprints are missing.’ Lucky people seem to create an alternative support system—faith, prayer, hobbies, meditation, friends—to tide over their bad phases and are thus able to use such periods to the best of their abilities.

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

Virgin Sands I kayaked to the far side of the island, too remote for the fishermen’s cast. Her virgin sands blistered white by the sun molded my footprints like a first kiss pressed upon her heated lips. I swam until my lungs heaved in exhausted bliss and I laid my body upon her timeless sands. She caressed me, stroked her fingers through my hair and let the salt water trickle on my lap. I closed my eyes. The sun beat brighter beneath my lids as I contemplated all the beaches where I had been and how none could compare to this one. The setting sun aroused me. Night fell impetuously. I made my bed in a deserted hut on piles of heather and tall grasses and though the stars signaled to me in glittery seduction and though the ocean flirted with me in breathy song, that night I dreamt only I dreamt only of my beach.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord, “You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.

Utopia Island where all becomes clear. Solid ground beneath your feet. The only roads are those that offer access. Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs. The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial. The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It. The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: the Valley of Obviously. If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly. Echoes stir unsummoned and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds. On the right a cave where Meaning lies. On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction. Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface. Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley. Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things. For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches turn without exception to the sea. As if all you can do here is leave and plunge, never to return, into the depths. Into unfathomable life.

Silent morning Quiet nature in dim light It is almost peaceless of the chirping of birds Waiting for the sunrise Feeling satisfied with pure breath Busy life- in pursuit of livelihood, running people In the intensity of the wood-burning sun, astray finch Sometimes the advent of north-wester I’m scared The calamitous heartache of the falling Caesalpinia pulcherrima! Listen to get ears Surprisingly I saw the unadulterated green weald Vernal, yellow and crimson colors are the glorious beauty of the unique nature An amazing reflection of Bengal The housewife’s fringe of azure color sari fly in the gentle breeze The cashew forest on the bank of flowing rivers white egret couple peep-bo The kite crookedly flies get lost in the far unknown The footstep of blustery childhood on the zigzag path Standing on a head-high hill touches the fog Beckoning with the hand of the magical horizon The liveliness of a rainy-soaked juvenile Momentary fascinated visibility of Ethnic group’s pineapple, tea, banana and jhum cultivation at the foot of the hill Trailer- shrub, algae and pebble-stone come back to life in the cleanly stream of the fountain Bumble bee is rudderless in the drunken smell of mountain wild flower The heart of the most beloved is touched by pure love In the distant sea water, pearl glow in the sunlight Rarely, the howl of a hungry tiger float in the air from a deep forest The needy fisherman’s ​​hope and aspiration are mortgaged to the infinite sea The waves come rushing on the beach delete the footprint to the beat of the dancing The white cotton cloud is invisible in the bluey The mew flies at impetuous speed to an unknown destination A slice of happy smile at the bend of the wave The western sky covered with the crimson glow of twilight Irritated by the cricket’s endless acrid sound The evening lamp is lit to flickering light of the firefly The red crabs tittup wildly on the beach Steadfast seeing Sunset A beautiful dream Next sunrise.

Waves of emotion Rip and fray Unbridled current Every day Crushing your heart Then drifting away Waves of emotion Unafraid   Waves of forgiveness Where loneliness bleeds Cleanse your wounds As you rest on the beach Ships in the distance A hint of perfume Waves of forgiveness Will be back soon   Waves of wonder Welcome the night Washing in Beyond the lights Traces of footprints A sip of red wine Waves of wonder You know the kind   Waves of love Will search for you They roll like thunder And carry the truth Offering hope In the nick of time Waves of love Are your lifeline

As time passed, I felt especially grateful to my family and friends who continued to check in and show up. On the six month anniversary of Dave's death, I sent them a poem, "Footprints in the Sand." It was originally a religious parable, but to me it also expressed something profound about friendship. the poem relates a dream of walking on the beach with God. The storyteller observes that in the sane there are two sets of footprints except during those periods of life filled with "anguish, sorrow or defeat." Then there is only one set of footprints. Feeling forsaken, the storyteller challenges God, "Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?" The Lord replies, "The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, are when I carried you." I used to think there was only one set of footprints because my friends were carrying me through the worst days of my life. But now it means something else to me. When I saw one set of footprints, it was because they were following directly behind me, ready to catch me if I fell.

Blazing bamboo torches lit the way to the tiki hut beside Sarasota Bay at Mote Marine Aquarium. The thatch-roofed pavilion sheltered wooden picnic tables wrapped with raffia skirting and crowned with centerpieces of conch shells filled with sprays of orchids. Potted palms and red hibiscuses had been placed around the perimeter of the outdoor room. The atmosphere was redolent with roasting pork and salt air. "This is ridic!" exclaimed Piper. "We're never leaving." She scooped a watermelon margarita garnished with a paper umbrella from the tray of a passing server. Jack helped himself to a Captain Morgan on the rocks. "To us," he said, raising his glass. Trays of skewered beef teriyaki and sweet-and-sour chicken were passed.

The Laetoli footprints were preserved by a rare combination of circumstances. About 3.6 million years ago, a volcanic eruption blanketed the landscape with ash like new-fallen snow. Rain transformed the ash into muck like wet cement. Into this scene ambled two or three human ancestors who left behind a set of tracks as vivid as footprints on a beach.

TRUE STORIES Don't ask for the true story; why do you need it? It's not what I set out with or what I carry. What I'm sailing with, a knife, blue fire, luck, a few good words that still work and the tide. The true story was lost on the way down to the beach, it's something I never had, that black tangle of branches in a shifting light, my blurred footprints filling with salt water, this handful of tiny bones, this owl's kill. a moon, crumpled papers, a coin, the glint of an old picnic, the hollows made by lovers in the sand a hundred years ago: no clue The true story lies among the other stories; a mess of colors, like jumbled clothing, thrown off or away, like hearts on marble, like syllables like butchers' discards. The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don't ever ask for the true story.

I wanted to collapse into the marshy grass, be absorbed into it. If I were the ground, I thought, I’d feel even less than I did when I was cleaning. Or maybe I’d feel every step, every footprint walking over me, but that still might be better than the desolation I felt now.

They’re everywhere you look. They stomp in the industrial sludge of Onondaga Lake. And over a savagely clear-cut slope in the Oregon Coast Range where the earth is slumping into the river. You can see them where coal mines rip off mountaintops in West Virginia and in oil-slick footprints on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. A square mile of industrial soybeans. A diamond mine in Rwanda. A closet stuffed with clothes. Windigo footprints all, they are the tracks of insatiable consumption. So many have been bitten. You can see them walking the malls, eying your farm for a housing development, running for Congress.

Time-washed - A Haiku Feelings ebb and flow, Sandy shore of fleeting time, Footprints of the heart.

Paradise Isle by Stewart Stafford In superstitious guidance, I discovered your shallows, Ingénues' on naked dunes, Edenites of Paradise Isle. Tragedy and chance are but pirates; One welcome, both shocking rogues, Am I a castaway or a sleepwalker? Let motivations as explorers gather. Leaving footprints only we can see, The wet sand, a camouflage ally, We quit the beach and head inland, As crabs in shade to the waterline crawl. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

As the tide fell, the footsteps emerge. The footsteps of a family walking on the beach of what is now a small village in eastern England, Happisburgh. Five sets of footprints. Probably a male and four children, dating from between 950,000 and 850,000 years before the present. These, discovered in 2013, are the oldest family footprints ever found. They are not the first: even older footprints have been found in Africa, where the human story started. But these are the oldest traces of a family. And they are the inspiration for this history of the world.

The adjective heard most often is magical. The pure magic of living light harkens back to childhood fantasies of secret grottos, wizards’ caves and unicorn haunts, where the mushrooms in fairy rings glow with cold green fire and a wave of the hand sends multicolored sparks streaming from fingertips. Real-world encounters with some enchantments manifest as children chasing fireflies on warm summer nights, lovers strolling a beach hand in hand with the Milky Way overhead while sprinklings of sea sparkle gild their footprints in the sand, and kayakers on a moonless night creating luminous blue explosions and sprays of liquid light with each dip and arc of their paddles.

A mark you leave on the world washes away like footprints on the beach. A mark you leave on a loved one lasts a lifetime

The tide will come in and there won’t be any more footprints. It’s like our lives, right? Whatever we do before this moment in time, we can’t do over. We have no choice in life but to keep moving ahead.

ON A VAST SMOOTH BEACH ON NANTUCKET IN 1959, my father slipped a grey stone into my hand, saying, “Close your eyes. Feel the stone.” The stone was cool and silky like Grandmother’s kid gloves. He asked, “What color is it?” Any child might say grey, or think this was a silly question and say, “Oh, Daddy, let’s run” and laugh as she left footprints in the sand. But I was not any child. I was Woodie Garber’s little girl, a modern architect’s daughter, and I knew he did not want a simple answer. At five years old, I had already found comfort in the private way we saw the world. I had to discover a magic answer that would please him.

The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens?

Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the Nice Carnival Song, an echo of last year’s vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her. In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world’s dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony.