The land we see around us bears both the marks of physical processes over the millennia, and, in a timescale we can more easily grasp, the actions of past generations. The land evolves constantly as climates change, as wealth, politics and power change, as cultures change, as technologies that are used to serve human needs change. I am drawn by the impact that these forces have on the land and by the traces that they leave from the lonely emptiness of the Scottish highlands, cruelly cleared of people, through the industrial remains of the recent past, to cities and towns where traces of today’s culture are stamped, officially or unofficially, upon the scene.”