How Did Cavemen Travel So Far?

How Did Cavemen Travel So Far? The cold hits your face before anything else. Not the biting, dramatic cold of a storm — just the flat, permanent cold of a forest that has never once been warm enough to forget winter entirely. The ground under your feet is a mix of compacted needle-litter and frost-hardened mud, and it gives slightly with each step in a way that tells you the temperature last night dropped far enough to matter. The trees here are spruce and pine, close enough together that the light comes through in columns rather than sheets, and somewhere ahead of you, maybe half a morning's walk, the treeline ends and the ridge opens out onto a slope that drops toward a river valley you have never personally seen but know exactly how to find. You are not lost. You are not exploring. You have been walking for six days and you have at least eight more ahead of you, and the word that would translate most accurately from whatever language lives in your head right now is not journey or expedition or migration. The word is closer to commute. This is just where you are going. This is just what you do.