The image of the tree in Rebecca Solnit’s “Grounds for Hope” fit seamlessly with her words, something about this image flows and takes shape within the piece. I stopped and reflected for a time on the artwork. A wealth of potential analogies come with the symbol of a tree. Whether this expresses our tendency to anthropomorphize, or the common elements of nature running through life that make such analogies abundant and compelling, I don’t know. Regardless, I think the tree as an analogy remains a powerful statement. A tree begins in the ground, grassroots. When Solnit writes about “grounds of hope”, she doesn’t just talk about the present, the surface, the place where our world is right now. She also speaks of within the ground, history, memory, past. “Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork— or underground work — often laid the foundation” (Solnit). The ground is where life begins. The past is where our present begins.
Take a seed. If the seed could not imagine itself a tree, it would not grow to become one. A seed must first find open grounds, and if they’re not open, fit itself into a place of its own. A seed must somehow know that the ingredients for life are packed within – it just needs the right ground, the right environment, to grow. If a seed never imagined the possibility of a tree, would it grow? In the same way, “if an alternative to this world is unconceivable [can] we change it?” (Miéville). I agree with Miéville in that we need a utopia to give us a vision, an alternative imaginable. And I also agree with Solnit that we need the memory of our past to remind us that change is possible. We need to dream like a seed: dig deep into the grounds of our history, the landscapes and ancestors that have been weathered and worn into our foundations, see the potential within ourselves to dream of light and life, and then grow and root and branch and breathe, and never forget our dreams of a tree.
Miéville, China. The Limits of Utopia | Salvage. http://salvage.zone/in-print/the-limits-of-utopia/. Accessed 10 Apr. 2018.
Solnit, Rebecca. (2017). Grounds for Hope. Tikkun 32(1), 30-39. doi: 10.1215/08879982-3769066
