Landmarks

by Robert Macfarlane

‘A lot of activists expect that for every action there is an equal and opposite and punctual reaction,’ Solnit writes, in a passage to which I find myself often returning: and regard the lack of one as failure. But history is shaped by the groundswells and common dreams that single acts and moments only represent. It’s a landscape more complicated than commensurate cause and effect … Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences … Writers need to understand that action is seldom direct. You write your books. You scatter your seeds. Rats might eat them, or they might just rot. In California, some seeds lie dormant for decades because they only germinate after fire.