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bf7f791
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I believe we need wilderness in order to be more complete human beings, to not be fearful of the animals that we are, an animal who bows to the incomparable power of natural forces when standing on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, an animal who understands a sense of humility when watching a grizzly overturn a stump with its front paw to forage for grubs in the lodgepole pines of the northern Rockies, an animal who weeps over the sheer be..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b903edb
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Now, in a shift of light, the shadows of birds are more pronounced on the gallery's white wall. The shadow of each bird is speaking to me. Each shadow doubles the velocity, ferocity of forms. The shadow, my shadow now merges with theirs. Descension. Ascension. The velocity of wings creates the whisper to awaken.... I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I wan..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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21b45a8
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The sin we commit against each other as women is lack of support. We hurt. We hurt each other. We hide. We project. We become mute or duplicitous, and we fester like boiling water until one day we erupt like a geyser. Do we forget we unravel in grief?
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women
friendship
female
support
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6a07491
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What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
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intelligence
disappearance
narrative
language
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a873b46
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The mind creates those things that exist.
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mind
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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8f292f8
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the unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.
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silence
listening
transformation
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9151010
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Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone or simply to walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Uta..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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641b97d
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I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have ..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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bd1f3cb
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I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day--the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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dcb0d52
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This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history - an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent. Privilege is what we inherit by our status as Homo sapiens living on this planet. This is the privilege of imagination. What we choose..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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f978150
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I wonder how it is we have come to this place in our society where art and nature are spoke in terms of what is optional, the pastime and concern of the elite?
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nature
society
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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177eacb
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And so we polish our own lives, creating landscapes and canyons and peaks with the very silt we try to avoid, the dirt we disavow or hide or deny. It is the dirt of our lives--the depressions, the losses, the inequities, the failing grades in trigonometry, the e-mails sent in fear or hate or haste, the ways in which we encounter people different from us--that shape us, polish us to a heady sheen, make us in fact more beautiful, more element..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b2d8777
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My spiritual life is found inside the heart of the wild.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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1745fa7
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I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I c..
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life-decisions
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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1e4b8ff
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What needs to be counted on to have a voice? Courage. Anger. Love. Something to say; someone to speak to; someone to listen.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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15b5edc
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I think about , who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer I believe it is our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path ..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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69e3e33
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Myths have a way of bringing what is unconscious to the surface and putting a face on what we cannot see.
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myth
unseen
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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52bbac4
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I believe that when we are fully present, we not only live well, we live well for others.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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74947f5
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The snake who tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit was not the Devil, but her own instinctive nature saying, Honor your hunger and feed yourself.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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69ed9f5
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We are contemporary citizens living in a technological world. Swimming in crosscultural waters can be dangerous, and if you are honest you can't stay there very long. Sooner or later you have to look at your own reflection and decide what to do with yourself. We are urban people. We make periodic pilgrimages to the country. . . . If we align ourselves with the spirit of place we will find humility fused with joy. The land holds stories.
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story
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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5e155ed
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How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy.
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spirit
imagination
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b841d30
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To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice.
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words
writer
writing
curiousity
disvoery
style
ego
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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8df844d
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People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand--what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for--Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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c3a036d
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The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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2ac0297
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I am leaving this tower and returning home. When I speak with family, and comments are always the same, 'Won't you be glad to get back to the real world?' This is my question after two weeks of time, only two weeks, spent with prairie dogs, 'What is real?' What is real? These prairie dogs and the lives they live and have adapted to in grassland communities over time, deep time? What is real? A gravel pit adjacent to one of the last remainin..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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02c3a90
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We know the quality of another's heart through her voice.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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8510304
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Members of the Coyote Clan are not easily identified, but there are clues. You can see it in their eyes. They are joyful and they are fierce. They can cry louder and laugh harder than anyone on the planet. And they have an enormous range. The Coyote Clan is a raucous bunch: they have drunk from desert potholes and belched forth toads. They tell stories with such virtuosity that you'll swear you've been in the presence of preachers. The Coyo..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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aebe215
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I accept the Organic Trinity of Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal with as much authority as I accept the Holy Trinity. Both are sacred.
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faith
inspiration
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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7547213
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CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.
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conversation
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d57fc62
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Finding one's voice is a process of finding one's passion.
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voice
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9668307
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Perhaps we project on to starlings that which we deplore in ourselves: our numbers, our aggression, our greed, and our cruelty. Like starlings, we are taking over the world.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0652a28
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The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.
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value
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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67462cf
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I have found what I need most to heal a broken bond is time together--the very thing I avoid is the thing most desired.
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healing
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9a6beb2
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It just may be that the most radical act we can commit is to stay home. What does that mean to finally commit to a place, to a people, to a community? It doesn't mean it's easy, but it does mean you can live with patience, because you're not going to go away. It also means commitment to bear witness, and engaging in 'casserole diplomacy' by sharing food among neighbors, by playing with the children and mending feuds and caring for the sick...
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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363d843
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Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf 's tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.
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fear
peter-the-wolf
survive
survival
safety
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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f07470b
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Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance - the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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e4a41eb
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I will never be able to say what is in my heart, because words fail us, because it is in our nature to protect, because there are times when what is public and what is private must be discerned. There is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside us not as a secret, but as a prayer...Each day I begin with the empty page.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d6df5bc
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Suffering shows us what we are attached to--perhaps the umbilical cord between Mother and me has never been cut. Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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59745aa
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We are wearing coats of trust. When one tells a story this is what happens.
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trust
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9fa87fc
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Roland Barthes says, "That which cannot be named is a disturbance."
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nameless
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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699c1a9
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What needs to be counted on to have a voice? Courage. Anger. Love. Something to say; someone to speak to; someone to listen. I have talked to myself for years in the privacy of my journals.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d95c456
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When I said, "I am my mother, but I'm not," I was saying my path would be my own."
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self
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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fe87a75
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Respect is primary.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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560b96a
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When Emily Dickinson writes, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul," she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief." --
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Terry Tempest Williams |