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bfb7ea8
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I could not separate the Bird Refuge from my family. Devastation respects no boundaries. The landscape of my childhood and the landscape of my family, the two things I had always regarded as bedrock, were now subject to change. Quicksand.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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5a6eedd
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Flocks of magpies have descended on our yard. I cannot sleep for all their raucous behavior. Perched on weathered fences, their green-black tales, long as rulers, wave up and down, reprimanding me for all I have not done. I have done nothing for weeks. I have no work. I don't want to see anyone much less talk. All I want to do is sleep. Monday, I hit rock-bottom, different from bedrock, which is solid, expansive, full of light and originali..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b1e0518
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Here is the woman who had seriously considered taking LSD under the supervision of a medical doctor so she could have "a mind-altering experience," who had read herself straight out of Mormonism and into Eastern religious thought--but refused to replace one dogma with another."
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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fed03a3
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Perhaps I am here because of last night's dream, when I stood on the frozen lake before a kayak made of sealskin. I walked on the ice toward the boat and picked up a handful of shredded hide and guts. An old Eskimo man said, "You have much to work with." Suddenly, the kayak was stripped of its skin. It was a rib cage of willow. It was the skeleton of a fish. I want to see it for myself, wild exposure, in January, when this desert is most se..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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3920c07
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There is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside us not as a secret, but as a prayer.
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silence
prayer
secrets
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6d92e17
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I believe that spiritual resistance -- the ability to stand firm at the center of our convictions when everything around us asks us to concede, that our capacity to face the harsh measures of a life, comes from the deep quiet of listening to the land, the river the rocks. There is a resonance of humility that has evolved with the earth. It is the best retrieved in solitude amidst the stillness of days in the desert.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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97d16ea
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Our national parks are memory palaces where our personal histories reside.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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798e63e
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Sorrow has a voice. It is the cold scream of silence turned inward.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6da0db8
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Mimi talked about Mother, how at fifty, women wonder what they have done with their lives. What do they believe? What is of value? What should they do with the new freedom that is theirs now that their children are, for the most part, grown? "It's a wonderful time in a woman's life to really explore the possibilities. Your mother has changed a great deal over the years." Mimi said. "And I think her cancer had a lot to do with it. During the..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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be4e03d
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Last night, I spoke at one of the Circle Meetings of the Baptist Church. Afterward, a Kenyan friend, Wangari Waigwa-Stone, and I spoke about darkness and stars. "I was raised under an African sky," she said. "Darkness was never something I was afraid of. The clarity, definition, and profusion of stars became maps as to how one navigates at night. I always knew where I was simply by looking up." She paused. "My sons do not have these guides...
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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bfd2401
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John Lilly suggests whales are a culture maintained by oral traditions. Stories. The experience of an individual whale is valuable to the survival of its community. I think of my family stories--Mother's in particular--how much I need them now, how much I will need them later. It has been said when an individual dies, whole worlds die with them. The same could be said of each passing whale.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0f39d9a
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I wonder how, among the Fremont, mothers and daughters shared their world. Did they walk side by side along the lake edge? What stories did they tell while weaving strips of bulrush into baskets? How did daughters bury their mothers and exercise their grief? What were the secret rituals of women? I feel certain they must have been tied to birds.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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2c480db
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The sin I have committed is the sin of adoption. I have adopted a different set of beliefs from the beliefs I was raised to obey. But this definition of sin over time has become my joy. I do have other gods before me, many, and none are a white elderly man sitting on a gilded throne in heaven. Pronghorn antelope holds authority for me, like a priest.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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12ef4f4
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The legacy of the Wilderness Act is a legacy of care. It is the act of loving beyond ourselves, beyond our own species, beyond our own time. To honor wildlands and wild lives that we may never see, much less understand, is to acknowledge the world does not revolve around us. The Wilderness Act is an act of respect that protects the land and ourselves from our own annihilation.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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be7da42
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By definition, our national parks in all their particularity and peculiarity show us as much about ourselves as the landscapes they honor and protect. They can be seen as holograms of an America born of shadow and light; dimensional; full of contradictions and complexities. Our dreams, our generosities, our cruelties and crimes are absorbed into these parks like water. The poet Rumi says, "Water, stories, the"
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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421a1f0
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The scales of equilibrium can be found in wilderness/
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a2a6171
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Wilderness is the source of what we can imagine and what we cannot- the taproot of consciousness. It will survive us.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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469a4a9
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Literature was life, and reading became an open door to a world beyond the familiar.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d8423bb
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The courage to continue before the face of despair is the recognition in those eyes of darkness we find our own night vision. Women blessed with death-eyes are fearless.
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death-and-dying
feminism
women
fear
fearless
despair
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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345eb56
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Wilderness is an antidote to the war within ourselves.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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5b3c02c
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A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious.
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writing
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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deacc81
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I return to the wilderness to remember what I have forgotten, that the world can be wholesome and beautiful, that the harmony and integrity of ecosystems at peace is a mirror to what we have lost.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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2a9f15a
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These are difficult time, transformative times- times of extreme actions especially within our national parks. Extreme drought. Extreme fires. Extreme development with extreme policy shifts needed in the name of global warming. The world is changing dramatically, both ecologically as well as politically. But I believe our greatest transformation as a species will be spiritual. The word "we" must include all species."
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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8d1d6dc
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Words empower us, move us beyond our suffering and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
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words
literature
suffering
words-have-power
stories
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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3a077ee
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Every day, I walked. It was not a meditation, but survival, one foot in the front of the other, with my eyes focused down, trying to stay steady.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a4def68
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Desert strategies are useful: In times of drought, pull your resources inward; when water is scarce, find moisture in seeds; to stay strong and supple, send a taproot down deep; run when required, hide when necessary; when hot go underground; do not fear darkness, it's where one comes alive.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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8d9cbfa
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Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move us beyond our suffering, and set us free. This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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56053ee
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We are a tribe of fractured individuals who can now only celebrate remnants of wildness.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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7c52680
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We spoke of death, not in a morbid way, but in a pragmatic one. "It will come," Dad said. "But for now, heaven is here."
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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c305c99
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This is wilderness, to walk in silence. This is wilderness, to calm the mind. This is wilderness, my return to composure.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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301f3fa
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The difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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529b0d7
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Wilderness is not a place of privilege, but rather a place of probity, where the evolutionary processes of life are free to continue.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a4d7646
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This is a landscape that should not be sold.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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62d3528
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I could walk forever with beauty. Our steps are not measured in miles but in the amount of time we are pulled forward by awe. This is another gift from our national parks, to be led by the vistas, to forget what nags us at home and remember what sustains us, the horizon.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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deb2af9
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Today majesty is the length from where I stand to the summit of the mountain we are climbing. This mountain has majesty and hold its own authority above all others.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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5426972
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Our fate like the fate of all species, is determined by chance, by circumstance, and by grace.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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334e97d
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It is a day of angled light and flat-bottomed clouds floating in a turquoise sky.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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caaa8de
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In the desert, success is the understanding of limits. One false move and you die. You can't talk your way out of thirst. Bare skin burns. Face-to-face with a spitting rattlesnake, the only thing you have to negotiate is your escape. There are rules in the desert. Pay attention. Adapt or parish.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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778c19c
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But what thrilled me most was the fact that millions of meteors burn up every day as they enter our atmosphere. As a result, Earth receives ten tons of dust from outer space. Not only do we take in the world with each breath, we are inhaling the universe. We are made of stardust.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0e6905c
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These valleys, these rivers- creased, folded, and pushed. What wisdom mountains house. My God- they are Gods. My God has feet of Earth. We are flickering moths in migration.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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2cb8f87
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The time has come for acts of reverence and restraint on behalf of the Earth. We have arrived at the Hour of Land.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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c7994cc
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Life is not so predictable. I am forced to listen more carefully. In the right and left worlds, the stories told are largely set, there much to defend at the expense of the other, rhetoric is charged with certitude; it's safer here, we are sure we are correct. We become missionaries for a position, yes, exactly, no doubt about it, practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inabili..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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de476ad
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I am of this place. Family is a place, and my family s located here, those who are living and those who have passed. I am am settled in the scent of sage, Mount Moran's reflection at Oxbow Bend is more than a mirror of memories; it is the joy found in river otters, a reminder that there are places in the world we can return for peace unchanged.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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032a974
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I was not born here by my consciousness towards a land ethic was
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Terry Tempest Williams |