I recently realised something that felt both obvious and oddly liberating:
we are all time travellers.
I time travelled from 1964 to today. It just took me 62 years to get here.
When people talk about time travel, they imagine machines, portals, or sudden leaps across centuries. But in reality, most of us are moving through time at a steady, human pace — carrying memories, habits, values, and ways of seeing the world from the eras that shaped us.
That makes many of us visitors from another time.
I remember a world before constant connectivity, before nature had to fight so hard for attention, before environmental loss was counted in dashboards and datasets. I also remember when communities felt closer, when knowledge was passed hand to hand, story to story, bench to bench. Those memories aren’t nostalgia; they’re evidence. Proof that things can be different — and therefore can change again.
Perhaps age isn’t about being “older” at all. Perhaps it’s about being further travelled. More landscapes crossed. More seasons witnessed. More social weather endured.
In that sense, children are travellers from a future we haven’t reached yet, and older people are messengers from places we can no longer visit. When they meet — in schools, parks, community gardens, on walking routes and shared projects — something powerful happens. A time-bridge forms.
Nature is the great constant in all of this. Trees that were saplings in my childhood now shade new generations. Rivers remember things we’ve forgotten. Soil holds the long view. When we work with nature — caring for parks, recording wildlife, planting for the future — we’re not just improving places. We’re sending messages forward in time.
This is slow time travel. No machines required. Just attention, care, and the willingness to learn from both past and future.
If you see me sitting on a bench, notebook in hand, I’m probably not lost.
I’m just comparing timelines.
Naturally Birmingham Future Parks Project 