Just Imagine

You are standing in a meadow, and it is a bright sunny day. The meadow is full of wildflowers, and in the marshy area, there are sedges - but other than the sedges, no grass. A shadow passes overhead, and you look up - wings, a glider perhaps, passes across the sun and crosses into the nearby hills. At the forest's edge are raspberry bushes, beside the tall oaks and cedars. Over past the marsh is a meandering stream that opens up into a lake, and the bleached and gnarly stumps that stick out of the water indicate that the stream is only a few years old at most.

From the forest you hear the insistent frenzy of singing from songbirds. The songs are not the ones you know, or are used to, but they are birdsong, with all of the enthusiasm and busy-ness of the genre. Over by the lake, you see a bird on the water. Pulling out your binoculars, you look - it is a loon, you think, but not the species you are used to; it is a little smaller, and the colouration is slightly different. But it is a loon, because it lets out the shrill but open throated song you know so well. Looking back at the forest, a small group of animals walk out from the thinning woods and stop by the raspberry bushes, eating.

They are dinosaurs - Edmontosaurus to be exact, and you are standing in a meadow of the Late Cretaceous, 65 million years ago.

The planet Earth has been many different worlds in its history. Some of these worlds would be as alien to us as Mars. Others are only slightly different from ours, with much we would recognize amid strange and wonderful things we can only imagine.

I like to imagine these worlds, and stand in them. If only I literally could.