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a2d40d5
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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.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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74d9d06
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These bears were reimagined in place through a collective belief and need. I do not know why they were sculpted into being, but their power is palpable. I may be blind to what has been buried here or held inside these effigy mounds for thousands of years, but I can read the landscape like Braille through the tips of my fingers translating the script of grasses into a narrative I can understand. The bears and birds and snakes written on the ..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d4c5dba
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Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9ab2458
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She loved the classics and believed in reading out loud.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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ddfa018
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All we have is time.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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72b54f3
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To be numb to the world is another form of suicide.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6e9fe52
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Enormous cumulus clouds float above the plateau in the shape of turtles. Always turtles. The are moving so slowly, almost imperceptibly, makes me dizzy. The ground is stable, but the sky is in motion. When do we have the time in our lives to notice things so fully? I remember when Steve first learned of his diagnosis, we stood in the corner of his library and he said, "Something had to give. I was working too hard, moving too fast." I was r..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a8c61f5
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Artifacts are alive. Each has a voice. They remind us what it means to be human - that it is our nature to survive, to create works of beauty, to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live in.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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3f6e9f8
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Conversation is the vehicle for change. We test our ideas. We hear our own voice in a concert with another. And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought. A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us. Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds. Once released, they may never return. If they do, they have chosen home and the bird-worms are calmed into an ars poetica.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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d9ff5cd
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This is what I have learned in these short weeks in the refuge: You cannot afford to make careless mistakes, like meditating in the presence of wolves, or topping your boots in the river, or losing a glove, or not securing your tent down properly. Death is a daily occurrence in the wild, not noticed, not respected, not mourned. In the Arctic, I've learned that ego is as useless as money. Choose one's travel companions well. Physical streng..
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wilderness
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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2fda897
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My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive.
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words
language
voice
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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13f636d
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The nature of living and loving is the act of reciprocity. As women, we are told that to be the guest is to receive. We are told that to be the host is to give. But what if it is the reverse? What if it is the guest who gives to the host and it is the host who receives from the guest each time she sets her table to welcome and feed those she loves? To be the guest and the host simultaneously is to imagine a mutual exchange of gifts predicat..
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women
giving-and-receiving
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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69d4269
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Our rivers are shrinking. Our lands are blowing away. And our lawmakers from our president to our legislators, both federal and state, are in denial of the one hard fact: We must change our lives, our politics, our beliefs, our actions, if we are going to survive.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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215d82a
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The courage to continue before the face of despair is the recognition that in those eyes of darkness we find our own night vision. Women blessed with death-eyes are fearless.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0827fbf
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True eloquence has an edge, sharp and clean.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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e6e376a
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Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis of our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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e1a40e6
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We come into this world through women: a woman who is spent, broken open, in awe. No wonder women have been worshiped ever since men first saw the crowning of a head, here, legs spread, a brushstroke of light. We are fire. We are water. We are earth. We are air. We are all things elemental. The world begins with "Yes," Changing women: we begin again like the moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait: wa..
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war
women
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b310894
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We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay. Life spirals in and then spirals out on any given day. It does not have to be one way, one truth, one voice. Nor does love have to be all or nothing. Neither does power. What is positive and what is negative is not absolute.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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534e55e
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Devil spelled backward is Lived.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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04f9f77
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We form the future by being caretakers of our past.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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9a92b74
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Good work is a stay against despair.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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b247e03
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Our National Parks] are more than scenery, they are portals and thresholds of wonder, an open door that swings back and forth from our past to our future.
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wonder
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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061d333
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To see the yellow fritillaries burst forth after the deep snows of winter and know that the bears are soon to follow is to be attentive to wild nature's seasonal fugue of infinite composition and succession. The great gray owl sitting on a snag near Sawmill Ponds is not simply a bird but a heightened intelligence with golden eyes behind a mask of feathers.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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a211071
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I care about my brother. I care about wilderness. To care is to lament. My brother is a wilderness, unknowable.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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aa44b1d
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Our species is committing suicide- that is a choice -and in the process, we are causing others pain.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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250c6b9
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Today, everyone thinks we need to stay positive and hopeful and not be completely honest about what we are seeing, what we know to be true. Whether we're talking about climate change or what's occurring on the streets in Ferguson, we are so afraid of offending people...and then, we only talk to our own constituencies and its' the same rhetoric over and over again until the words become bloodless. (p. 325)
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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f8ede1a
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What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her ow..
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evolution
motherhood
death
pregnancy
mother
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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fe48c68
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Evidently, selling off America's public lands is not only good for democracy, but good for the economy. It will pay the bills for building more roads and make up for the losses in the decline of timber sales. It will also help pay for the war in Iraq, a war predicted on lies. The outcry is faint. The streets are empty. We are comfortable here in the United States of America. We the people seem to be asleep, numb, and dead to the liberties b..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0463058
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In this era where the war on terror is used as an excuse to exploit and plunder, and sell off our public lands, in this new world where the World Bank and World Trade Organization honor corporate rule over local enterprises, and where environmental issues are being usurped in the favor of more jobs and a robust economy, Where is the place for wilderness?
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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0f668ba
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Our institutions and agencies are no longer working for us. It is time to reimagine the wilderness movement as a movement of direct action, time to reimagine our public lands as sanctuaries, refuges, and sacred lands. Time to rethink what is acceptable and what is not.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6e38539
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I fear silence because it leads me to myself, a self I may not wish to confront. It asks that I listen. And in listening, I am taken to an unknown place. Silence leaves me alone in a place of feeling. It is not necessarily a place of comfort.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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c985fcb
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I personally have seen flamingos throughout the state of Utah perched proudly on lawns and in the gravel gardens of trailer courts. These flamingos, of course, are not Phoenicopterus ruber, but pink, plastic flamingos that can easily be purchased at any hardware store. It is curious that we need to create an environment foreign from our own. In 1985, over 450,000 plastic flamingos were purchased in the United States. And the number is risin..
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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02c152a
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Can you be inside and outside at the same time? I think this is where I live. I think this is where most women live. I know this is where writers live. Inside to write. Outside to glean.
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women-writers-on-writing
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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66b5d62
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I wish I was at p[peace now, but the desert has become my heartbreak. Perhaps that is the nature of deserts- to break us open, wear us down to bedrock.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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ad8084e
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The desert has its own currency and it is measured in water.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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96c9cbc
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Beware of the charismatic wolf in sheep's clothing. There is evil in the world. You can be tricked.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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ffd9ffb
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The world is not a safe place. Perhaps it never has been, but it is still a beautiful place. This is the disorienting truth of the Colorado Plateau: We stand on the edge of a great erosion landscape. The silence before us translates into deep time. We look not simply toward a linear horizon but a curved one where the planet becomes a globe spinning toward change.
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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6444b38
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I love the concept of unity and diversity ... most decisions are based on a tiny difference. People say this was right and that wrong--the difference was a feather ... I keep scales wherever I am to remind me of that ... They're a symbol of my awareness of the distortion most people have of what's better and what isn't. LSR
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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155bef6
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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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b7a7bdb
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Where do I belong? You can't belong everywhere. Or perhaps we can if we pay attention to the paths of our ancestors. Perhaps this is what it means to be American. Bloodlines originate in storylines. Some people stay in place, others move on. But if we look back far enough, we are all interconnected, interrelated, through place and race and time. *
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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868576d
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How we treat our land, how we build upon it, how we act toward our air and water, in the long run, will tell what kind of people we really are. -Laurance S. Rockefeller
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nature
national-parks
environment
land
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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43d5eea
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Mother had one quilt square made by a friend of hers framed, and hung it in her bathroom, where she saw it first thing in the morning. When I asked her why this mattered, she said, "It represents how women piece together their lives from the scraps left over for them."
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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f7a48d4
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If our national parks are to remain viable in the future, they must become sites of transformation where the paradigm of domination and manipulation ends and a vision of unison begins
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Terry Tempest Williams |
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97d69c7
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Hindsight shows us our blind spots and biases; we can recognize ourselves as human beings caught in the cultural mores of a specific time.
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Terry Tempest Williams |