It was a jolt, as if someone had shoved me hard in the back, to realise what they were. These weren’t some strange act of nature. They were made by humans. They were grinding grooves, where people put an edge on their stone axes. I’d seen the pictures in books.

This entire creek was a whetstone.

In an instant wilderness transformed itself under my feet into workshop. Generation after generation of people had ground their axes here. In this sweet glade they had eaten, slept, made love, had babies.

Forget feeling like the first human.

And forget any cosy illusions about Wiseman. This country wouldn’t have seemed like wilderness when he was here. He couldn’t have pretended for a moment that it was an empty land. Along every stream, the thousands of axe-grinding grooves would have been clear and fresh, the newly scraped stone gold against the dark. Narrow sandy paths would have wound through the trees. The trees themselves would have carried fresh bleeding wounds where canoes and shields had been prised out of the bark. Every rock overhang would have been blackened by a cooking fire, scattered with bones and shells from past meals. Wiseman would have known that every acre of this place was as lived in as his own house.

No wonder he thought he had to build a fortress.

The campfire later was a comfort, a room made of light, carved out of the darkness, with myself safe at the centre.

But it blinded too. You had a choice. You could feel safe, but be blind. Or you could see, and know how small you were.

I’d lit the fire, cooked my meal, heaped the wood on to push the darkness back. Now I let the flames die, the embers darken. It was time to see what was out there.

The bush at night was like a great sighing lung. Up on the ridge that encircled the hollow, a wind was blowing, but down here only the occasional shaft of breeze came through.

In the pauses between breaths, the night noises. A flurry and rustle, a small thump. Certain private sounds—pwik pwik pwik. Close at hand, the breeze was smaller, more personal, the flutter of one bunch of leaves at a time, a shaft of cooler air like the draught from an open door. With the fire burned away to nothing, the trees were bigger and closer. They leaned down, soft shaggy creatures, watching.

I was restless, alert. Almost as if I was waiting for something. Not that I was frightened, exactly. Nothing here was malevolent, nothing was hostile. This place wasn’t going to spook me.