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History becomes constant. Its mark is continually present. When Neil MacGregor was collecting oral material near Tomintoul in the 1990s, he talked to a man called Alasdair Grant. Pointing out a cave used by the Jacobite poet John Roy Stuart, he said, ‘John Roy’s idea’s right – guerilla warfare – not like Bonnie Prince Charlie – he’s a fool’. Grant made the remark as if these figures are still present. Between Lurg and Abernethy, Neil talked to another man called Donald Smith, whose farm was on the edge of the moor. During the conversation, Donald spotted some walkers on the hill and said, ‘They’re about 50 yards off the path, but of course you can’t see it now’. Though the path had become overgrown with heather, it still occupied a place in Donald’s mind map of his domain (MacGregor 2016 – personal communication).

MacGregor’s anecdote is very like Dorothy Eggan’s experience amongst native Americans in Colorado in the 1960s. Looking over the Grand Canyon, a Hopi man asks her what she sees? She describes the colours of the rock and a trail that appears and reappears as it winds from the mesa over the edge of the Canyon. The man replies: ‘The trail is still there even when you do not see it, because I can see all of it’. He asks Eggan another question: ‘Did you go to the Grand Canyon when you described it?’ which she denies. The Hopi man concludes: ‘Part of you was there or part of it was here’. Then smiling: ‘it is easier for me to move you than to move any part of the Grand Canyon’ (Eggan 1966, 253).