The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1850, wrote:
All things are engaged in writing their history . . . Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.