Nice post Carol. Have been on Cope's site since late 1990's and in some ways my journey has mirrored Copes to some degree, good times and bad, kids, learning to drive, a growing excitement at prehistory etc... (well except the rock star bit).
Don't post on TMA any where near as much as I used to, but I do read most of the posts from the sidelines in a terrible stalkery fashion. My inroads into the past were via old 70's programmes like Chronicle, In Search Of and Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World. Never believed in faeries or spirits etc. I'm too much of a rationalist for that. My interest and love of history, and particularly prehistory has never gone away, perhaps it's the mystery of not knowing, when almost everything is explained away these days. Think it's that 'connection' to those folk I feel whenever I visit a place, tomb, settlement etc.... Like yourself, don't believe in gods/goddesses, but I have come to realise over the years that I am a deeply spiritual person, and something about these places definitely stirs something deep down in me. Maybe it's that realization that we'll never truly understand the people, their lives or their mindset that draws me in.
Perhaps the place that has moved me the most in terms of feeling a connection to our forbears isn't a site or a tomb as such, but are those wonderful Iron Age (I think?) footprints uncovered after storms on Formby Point beach (they showed them on the TV prog Coast I think). A wonderfully tangible, though ephemeral moment in time captured in the silts and clays of a warm/hot day, several millennia ago are a joy to behold. Perhaps it's because I know that in a few tides time, they will be washed away, never to 'be' again. Kids running, wild animals being tracked, animals that are no longer alive in Britain, it's a special place, and scratches the double itch of loving beaches and our lost past.
I've just returned from a wonderful hiking holiday in Suffolk. If there was weather that wasn't thrown at me during my hikes, I'd like to know of it. It made me realise how hardy our forebears were. In all my 21st century gear, I was still cold and wet all day many days. It gave me a newfound respect for our (even quite recent) ancestors. In November, the Suffolk coast is a truly wild place, the sea and wind sculpted and shaped the beach almost daily. I stayed at a place called Kessingland Beach, a cheap and cheery holiday chalet. Whilst there I found out that some of the earliest remains of 'human' habitation have been found nearby dating to 700 000 years BCE. An amount of zero's it's hard to comprehend in human lifetimes, and it's a time before humans were humans (Homo Heidelburgensis I believe the finds were attributed to). It's an easily accessible, but truly a magical place.
On the last hour of the last day, slightly reluctant to head home whilst the beach was empty, the sun was out and the wind blew ringlets in my hair, I found what I thought was possibly a flint scraper on the foreshore. Now, in all my years of 'mooching' I've never found anything, let alone anything prehistoric, not a sausage. The way that stone felt in my hand was a thrill. It fit my small hands perfectly. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I only picked it up cos' it had a lovely shape, colour and patina. Anyhoo, after contacting the portable antiquities in Suffolk (in case they wanted a butchers at it) I was told that it was probably a natural 'pot lid' type flint, which I could go along with, but (the lovely lady also said) because of the recent storms, and the fact that it had been on the beach for a while, it could well be a scraper, albeit one that is badly worn and eroded. Anyhow, as far as I'm concerned, it's a scraper :)
Give Kessingland a visit, it's a wild and wonderful place.
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