I Know Where I’m Going

“What would be left of human action, human traces, human constructions, human buildings and wider ripple effects of humans after that length of time…assuming, that humans disappear in the geologically near future.”

A fragmented road trip through Britain on the peripheries. Down empty roads, off in the wilderness, a few lone stragglers. My first stop geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, talking about the Earth in One-hundred millions years time.

Powell & Pressburger’s heroine in their magical I Know Where I’m Going (1945) knows exactly where she’s going, and she tries to get there with stoic pig-headedness, but of course she never does. I decided to follow her lead and make my destination the same as hers, but with every intention of getting lost, following false leads, and trusting in the laws of serendipity, while winding my way through an almost abandoned, devastated Britain, to the Isle of Mull. My first stop was with Jan Zalasiewisz, a geologist who had been trying to imagine the Earth in one-hundred million years, which seemed like as good a start as any.