Anna’s example was simple: if we are to save the world, we have to start somewhere. We just have to do one damn thing after another. Hers was a small kind of heroism, but it was the most powerful kind. The kind that saves us. We all have to go to work in our own communities, in our own landscapes. We have to show up day in, day out, for years and

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I said it was hard to worry about something that looked so perfect, when we could not see below the surface or see the damage we had done. Anna looked at me and was solemn. Nothing was quite the same as it was in the old days, she said. The giant seabird colonies to the north were one by one falling silent, as the birds failed to breed. But, she

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Everything around us, between ocean-bed and sky, was under the protection of this seventy-year-old woman. I looked at her in the boat with me and marvelled at the ridiculousness of it. She was powerless against the scale of the natural forces at work on the islands, and against the issues affecting the oceans, yet fierce in her determination to

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When Anna went out, it was mesmerizing to watch her working on the rocks, from hut to hut, and insanely beautiful at times. Rarely have I seen anyone so absorbed in each living moment. I began to understand the old Norwegian myths about the rocks and mountains coming alive, shapeshifting into creatures that were half human and half geology. This

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Somewhere in me, I knew it wasn’t fair to disappear from the farm and leave my family behind; but, for the first time in my life, I didn’t care. It wasn’t just that I was tired. I was lost. I’d begun to avoid other people – just speaking to others emptied me out. I felt overwhelmed, and angry at everyone around me. I was in trouble, and I didn’t

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