THE BELIEVER: On the one hand, then, you write strong activist tracts—against nuclear power, for example, but others too. It’s an appealing, respectful kind of activism rooted in knowledge. On the other hand, though, you have these very literate, complex exploratory essays that talk about being lost, about being surprised, about the wisdom of not knowing—or at least of recognizing the inherent limits to knowing. Somewhat of an enchantment theme, though not so-labeled. So, how thus reconciled?

REBECCA SOLNIT: I think it’s important to be clear about what we know and what we don’t. We know that nuclear waste is a big problem. And we don’t know quite what forces move even those we love best or exactly what the consequences of our actions are. Writing can travel in both territories, like a lens that can focus or widen, zoom or back up to the big picture. In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” George Orwell declared—and the passage and a bit more of it is on the wall near my desk at home—

I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.

There’s also a wonderful essay of Orwell’s called “A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray,” where he writes about a racy ballad, planting trees, and other pleasant subjects, and you get a taste of the writer he might have been had he not been so compelled by the bleak politics of his time.

Yet even this piece is a reflection on legacies and the good or bad effects we can have long after our own time—particularly when it comes to planting trees (and you get a rare glimpse of Orwell the gardener). Orwell’s moral imperative hasn’t gone to sleep—it’s just contemplating milder topics than totalitarianism and propaganda. But the planting of trees matters, to him and to the world—and in our time, as politics have become more and more about gender roles, food, the environment, culture, and...