Signs of ageing.
The lines which creep onto our faces, which feather our eyes and trace the places we have laughed and cried and frowned: there are many ways to erase them.
What with creams and botox and plastic surgery, no-one need ever betray where and what they have been through the tracery of their face. And many choose to do so, and the rest of us gossip and speculate about those who have the money to look young again.
But a historian would throw his hands up in horror.
The landscape has its signs of ageing too. It never dies, just accumulates signs from way back, when man was first discovering how to smelt iron and build stone structures, right through until now, with the roads we have returned to the wild, and the concrete defensive pill boxes which park on the side of our rivers, markig where we feared we might be invaded and overrun entirely.
Every hummock, every built structure, even every stone holds stories. Like the wrinkles of a place.
Of course, we come to an end and become part of the landscape eventually. But it continues, seemingly endlessly, accumulating wrinkles, charming its onlookers.
We in England are reaching the end of our Summer holidays. And more than ever before, those endearing wrinkles of the places we have been have struck me deeply.
I shall keep mine. I have no money, and I think even if I erased them Time might render me a little unnatural.
Here are some of the landscape wrinkles I found this holiday.
Kate Shrewsday 
Beautiful! Nor surgery please! 🙂 Lovely, most attractive different aspect and views. Well done!
Love DIna
To me these images invert Stevie Smith’s line to read “Not drowning but waving”. Wonderful.
These are definitely ageing gracefully (not like me)
Fantastic collection of wrinkles and time weathered charm. I had no idea that Robbie Burns graced Central Park.
Lovely wrinkles in time.
Wrinkles tell stories, don’t they? On land and on faces…
Beautiful, timeless … let those wrinkles that tell the stories of our lives remain. It would be loss to erase them. This holds true of the lines on our faces and on our landscape.
Love your pics, as natural as the crack of dawn.
Whatever is Robbie Burns doing in Central Park?
I wondered the same and wandered off to find this:
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/centralpark/monuments/197
Thanks for doing that – interesting reading.
“The wrinkles of a place.” You are such a poet with both words and photos. England’s face is more deeply furrowed than America’s, and all the more interesting for it.
What a widespread and varied selection of images!
That beach furniture is beyond me …
Hear hear. I was reading an interview with an actress, I don’t remember which one, who was saying she hadn’t gone the plastic surgery route, though she wasn’t condemning those who had. Then suddenly, as an almost throwaway line, was the statement that she ‘would avoid it as long as i can’. sounds as though she has fallen for the eternal youf idea after all. unless we value age, and imperfection, the aged and imperfect among us are always going to be treated as lesser beings.
Your landscape wrinkles are beautifully rendered, Kate, and I’m glad to hear you’ll be keeping your lines. I have every one of mine. I worked hard on them, whether through tears or laughter, or both. Now, if only blusher wouldn’t sneak into the grooves, tee hee.
Lovely post, Kate – wrinkles tell our stories. I don’t even want to erase mine. Saw a movie with an old, face-lifted Robert Redford the other night and all I could think was how sad he felt the need to do that to what was previously a handsome face – now he just looks weird.
I think a visit to Norfolk is in order for us Kate 🙂
Appreciating such beauty and being continually energized by the curiosity to follow the story behind the names is what will keep you youthful, Kate. It’s an amazing thing, but when you have that kind of spirit, no one seems to notice the little lines that indeed are inevitable. And you’ve had an incredibly rich summer. I’ve enjoyed our vacation with you. 🙂
A clever post – and I do enjoy my wrinkle little facescape – it means I’m still here an kicking after all. LOL!
Be well, Kate,and blog on …
Then, you and I shall grow old in much the same way Kate. Lovely images.
Beautiful pictures all Kate. How flattering to include Central Park with Norfolk’s picturesque countryside. You have such a great eye, you could find beauty in a cup of spilled coffee on the sidewalk. … Maybe.
So Big Al isn’t the only one to hide things in toilets.
One of your best. 🙂