Terry Tempest Williams has created a collection of essays that captures both her spirit and her commitment. It is a set of essays that is particular strong for women, but should be read by men as well.
In the opening essay - In the Country of Grasses she explores her naturalist driven visit to the Serengeti. This trip to Africa gives her many experiences and insights, but ultimately it does for her what it is intended in this collection - it makes her think about home and the planet. "The Mara is wild, uninterrupted country capable of capturing one's spirit like cool water in a calabash. And it appears endless, as its southern boundary is contiguous with Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.
"The Mara belongs to the Maasai or the Maasai to the Mara. The umbilical cord between man and earth has not been severed here. The Maasai pasture their cattle next to leopard and lion. They know he songs of grasses and the script of snakes."
Soon that reflection is saddened as she encounters the severed relationship between man and nature that is everywhere on Earth. "No one speaks for some time. The isolation of endangered species is disquieting. Two rhinos. And in ten years, what will the count be?"
Good advice for a traveler - "As a naturalist, I yearn to extend my range like the nomadic lion, rhino, or Masai. But in remote and unfamiliar territory I must learn to read the landscape inch by inch. The grasses become braille as I ruin my fingers through them."
This sensitivity runs through out the book, providing the context for her ruminations and frustrations. She portrays herself as a naturalist, a woman and a Mormon through the essays that follow. She defines herself by family and home as well as friends and places. The friends are Georgia O'Keefe and Edward Abbey as well as those who have shared personal moments. She is moved by Rachal Carson and she respects those who see the need for protecting the Earth.
She talked about the Coyote that continues to befuddle and challenge the gun, poison and traps - we route for these rogues in many of their battles. They survive by deception and she says of O'Keefe - "... by tricking them once again, into seeing the world her way, hrough bold color and integrity of form. O'Keefe's clarity would become the American art scenes confusion."
The death of her brother Alan is a sad retrospective called the Village Watchman. Alan was institutionalized and had created his own world through the unique talents that he alone possessed. "Alan was not normal. He was unique; one and only; single; unusual; extraordinary; rare. His emotions were not measured, his curiosity not bridled. In a sense, he was wild like a mustang in the desert and, like most wild horses, he was eventually rounded up."
The list of people whose story are part of her story continues throughout and the names are a mix of famous and unknown, but important. In Eulogy for Edward Abbey she celebrates an outspoken poetic leader of environmental outrage and finds the need to take action "Love always, the Earth."
For women readers there are some explorations of the special female role in the world. Mardy Murie and Rachal Carson show courage that cannot be measured by gender. They found what they believed in and they acted upon it.
"We must call for the abandonment of hierarchies that contribute to the vertical power that has compromised the earth." is a call to all people. To women she shares this quote from Chantal Chawaf "We, as women, today, in our logos and discourse, have to articulate he excess desire, the uncensored body, and life - not an idealized life, but life just as it is, with its problems, anxieties, and frighting aspects. we must do so because it is precisely this fear of life that has kept life outside culture."
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