In the 1960s, American anthropologist Gregory Bateson suggested that art can aid consciousness appreciate the systemic nature of mind and its embedment in ecology. This is precisely what A Map of Glass (2006) does: Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart dramatizes the entanglement of economy, ecology and ecopoiesis. Through the motif of the trace and through the concept of plasticity, the novel reveals that human existence is subtended by a transformative interplay between protectionist, exploitative and relativist attitudes towards the environment.