Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day Marin County.

Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

David Ferrier is the author of footprints in search of future fossils.

He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he teaches at the University of Edinburgh.

In this piece, David reflects on the ways that the coronavirus has shrunk the scale of our

individual worlds, leaving us on an uncertain and increasingly narrow path.

While he was in lockdown earlier this year,

found inspiration in the meandering imprints left by the tracks of animals

and began to seek out desire paths, ways of walking and paying attention

that mimic the way an animal pads a path across the land.

With his quarantine over, this way of moving

through the world maintains its relevance. When we keep ourselves open to the unexpected, David suggests,

we might find a new path from here to there and from present to future.

Being restricted in where we can go offers new opportunities for noticing where we are.

Since we went into lockdown, I've been working in a room that looks down on our suburban back garden.

One day, when lockdown was still new,

I was staring out of the window,

struggling to concentrate,

and trying to get to grips with the way the world seemed to have slipped its rails,

when something caught my eye.

...