In my viewfinder

…I looked at him, and I looked about the disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have identified on the face of a cliff; and this speculation came over me: If this mud could petrify at this moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thounsand years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our successors on the Earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding inference as the existence of a polished state of society that bore with the public savagery of neglected children in the streets of its capital city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save them!
_ Charles Dickens [from “Night walks”, “On an amateur beat” excerpt] _

Image info:
“The footprints of an extinct creature”
Planet Earth, May 2019
© Massimo S. Volonté