I had another ‘there is more than we realise’ moment while jogging down our leaf-strewn lane in the early morning light.
The surface was slightly damp and slippery where the leaves were decomposing. Welsh rain and chilled nights were doing their thing on the vegetation.
And because the lane only goes to our house, the road users are mainly non-human. So I share my run with the rabbits, accompanied by the call of rook and buzzard, as our neighbour’s cows look on, bemused.
But it’s not all on the surface. Beneath the lane is a four-foot steel pipe that used to take fresh water from the reservoir that once filled our valley to the city.
And well beneath that, the tunnels of the mines digging coal a century ago.
Perhaps the landscape of our lives frames who we are far more than we realise.