Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

by Terry Tempest Williams

The beloved author of Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams is one of the country's most eloquent and imaginative writers. The desert is her blood. In this potent collage of stories, essays, and testimony, Red makes a stirring case for the preservation of America's Redrock Wilderness in the canyon country of southern Utah.

As passionate as she is persuasive, Williams writes lyrically about the desert's power and vulnerability, describing wonders that range from an ancient Puebloan sash of macaw feathers found in Canyonlands National Park to the desert tortoise—an animal that can "teach us the slow art of revolutionary patience" as it extends our notion of kinship with all life. She examines the civil war being waged in the West today over public and private uses of land—an issue that divides even her own family. With grace, humor, and compassionate intelligence, Williams reminds us that the preservation of wildness is not simply a political process but a spiritual one.

"Lush elegies to the wilderness.... Earthy, spiritual, evocative." —The Boston Globe

"Erotic, scientific, literary.... Her intimacy with this landscape is complex and passionate." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Her finest writing... Use[s] pure language in the face of laws that need to be changed and lawmakers and citizens who need to understand that there is another way to see." —Portland Oregonian

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Environment, Poetry, Travel

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2001

About the author

Terry Tempest Williams is an American author, conservationist and activist. Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of her native Utah in which she was raised. Her work ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature.

She has testified before Congress on women’s health, committed acts of civil disobedience in the years 1987 - 1992 in protest against nuclear testing in the Nevada Desert, and again, in March, 2003 in Washington, D.C., with Code Pink, against the Iraq War. She has been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of the Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.

Williams is the author of Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books.

In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfictionand a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009). In 2011, she received the 18th International Peace Award given by the Community of Christ Church.

Williams is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah and a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. She has been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College where she continues to teach. She divides her time between Wilson, Wyoming and Castle Valley, Utah, where her husband Brooke is field coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Reviews

[Sschoville · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll admit I've started a love affair with Terry Tempest Williams. This book found me at the second hand store; I read it, and now I am feverishly scanning the library for every book she's written. Even if you don't know the desert (myself included), you will fall in love with it because she loves it so much. It also made me ask: what are my stories of the land?

[Feisty Harriet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays about red rock and canyon country was a little hit and miss. Some of them I *loved* and re-read as soon as I'd finished the first read-through. Others made me angry, "Dear Terry, you can't just go wandering off in the middle of the summer in the desert, barefoot without water. It's a Bad Idea. I don't care how much spirit you feel in the rocks and how much you identify with the landscape. Stop it!" That being said, in many ways, this book is a series of love letters to the country I call home, the high desert of south-central Utah.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come.” Terry Tempest Williams is one of my favorite writers - in particular because of the way she writes about the desert and the Southwest. Her deep love and respect for the wilderness and her advocacy for the need to protect it come through in every sentence, paragraph, and page. While this was written over 20 years ago as a case for the preservation of the Redrock Wilderness in southern Utah, so many of the issues and arguments remain relevant today - in some cases even more so. Her writing is both a benediction and a call to action.

[Helynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her typically eloquent plea for love and protection of the American West wilderness, Terry Tempest Williams states, "The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come" (215). What a quotation! I can see this chiseled in stone in the offices of the Senate and House of Representatives. If only our lawmakers and advocates would take this beautiful statement seriously! Speaking of U.S. law, Williams includes at the back of this book a detailed description of America's Redrock Wilderness Act of 2001 with all of its provisions for protection of wilderness areas of the Great Basin. She also includes an astonishingly long list of specific areas that beg protection from developers and others who would exploit the land for personal gain. "Only a few generations ago, Utah was settled on spritual grounds. It is ironic that now Utah must be protected on spiritual ground for the generations to come . . . Wilderness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from" (75). I will ever be grateful to Williams for her beautifully written admonishments for the preservation of our wilderness areas. This book, as well as her others, are truly a gift.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A seductive read. In my hands even the book's small size and weight were enjoyable sensations. (4 star read for me - not all the essays were equal in vitality. I added a star for the book's design.)

Yet another book of Williams' that makes me want to read more of her work.

In response to the subtitle - Passion and Patience in the Desert - Williams seems to say that finding your passion will require you to be patient, and it will also tear you apart. "Through the weathering of your spirit (like the weathering of the landscape), the erosion of the soul, we are vulnerable. Isn't that what passion is - bodies broken open through change.?" (p. 197)

The wilderness is where Williams goes for repair, it's where she finds kinship, it's what she writes about. In spite of her Mormon upbringing she chose to not have children and, instead. form a different kind of family. At the same time her passion for the wilderness and its preservation, her pleas, her activism also ware away at her.

America's Redrock Wilderness Act was proposed to Congress in 1999. Its outlined in this book, which was published in 2001. America's Redrock Wilderness Act still hasn't been passed. Senator Dick Durbin introduced the act again in April of 2023. It has yet to move out of Committee.

[Noelle Gignoux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt more hit or miss than the other books of hers that I’ve read, and I found myself getting tired by the end. Certainly, some beautiful essays scattered throughout, but I felt that it was somewhat repetitive and found some of her personal anecdotes somewhat odd, dated, and frustrating.

[Brooke Marx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored the first half and the well-crafted mix of short stories and poignant essays but then she kinda lost me when she got all freaky with the rock and the river

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*
I love TTW and am in the process of reading as many of her books as I can find at the library. This one, which was written in part to stimulate activist engagement in saving the canyonlands and red rock wilderness in Utah from exploitation, was not my favorite. TTW is deeply connected to the West and her family's roots there and like most of her books, that connection features prominently in this one.

This is a collection of essays, some published previously, that focuses on this desert landscape. While some see little here except resources to exploit or more land to settle, Terry paints a passionate picture of the importance of keeping this land as pristine as possible. She sees remnants of an ancient Anasazi culture in the petroglyphs that are scattered throughout the region. She relishes the emptiness, the vivid colors, the heat, and the wildlife that manages to survive here. An avid hiker, many of her most lyrical passages are written as homages to experiences she had while hiking in this challenging landscape.

She is clear-eyed in seeing the opposition to her activism and deep need to save this land. Her family has made its living tearing the land up and laying pipe to serve the oil and gas industry and most recently, the cable industry. They are not happy with her environmentalism nor her willingness to diminish her family's livelihood to protect an endangered species. The landscape she lives in isn't the only thing red ...for this is a deeply red state politically and she is among the opposition to most of what those politics stand for. She describes the tension between the U.S. East (where all those blue elites live) and the West. Westerners deeply resent the federal government and the elitist goal of public land ownership and preservation rather than allowing unfettered individualism that enables widespread exploitation to benefit a few. It seems that few whites who live in the West, treasure it enough to protect it. Rather it is viewed as a private cache of wealth that no broader community should control. Of course, Native peoples are left of out this conversation, those who were originally displaced and prefer to protect the land today as sacred.

Ms. Williams is a passionate voice for challenging our desire to spread as far as possible into the world. In one essay she describes her personal decision to move further into the desert near Moab and away from Salt Lake and its increasing urban sprawl. She and her husband sacrifice income, security, and closeness to family for the peace and uncertainty of life in the desert. I admire that about her. Her willingness to live her convictions makes her the exceptional writer that she is.

But "Red" was not as engaging as some of her other books, perhaps because it is so personal and poetic at times, that it is difficult for me to relate to her feelings. I don't experience a connection to "the land" in the way that she does; I was born and raised in a city. So when she describes how the land provokes sexual stirrings, I can't connect. For me, the sections in which she describes her family tensions over the protection of land turtles, her alienation from her home as millionaires begin to build huge mansions nearby, and the inspiration she gets from another woman writer who fought for the land more than 100 years ago, are her most effective.

This would not be the first book I'd recommend reading of the many she has written. "Refuge" covers some of the same territory and is more effective. But this book does help people like me better understand the forces that oppose those of us who want to protect this part of our country from degradation from drilling and urban sprawl. The section in which she describes the need for migration corridors is especially well-done and presents a concept of preservation that is being increasingly discussed today by both climatologists and environmentalists. It is worth picking this up to understand this important concept.

[Leah Mosher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Red is a collection of stories and essays about the desert of southern Utah and the necessity of preserving it. None of the stories are more than a few pages long, and they serve to evoke a sense of place for the reader who has not been to these majestic lands. Although some of the stories felt a bit flat on their own, I think as a collection they fulfill their purpose. More compelling than the fictional creations are Williams’ personal recollections and essays.

In “Labor,” Williams muses upon one of her visits to The Birthing Rock, a boulder with an image of a woman giving birth etched onto it. This ancient Anasazi petroglyph prompts her to contemplate her decision not to have children and the way she and her husband have chosen to define family.

“I look across the sweep of slickrock stretching in all directions, the rise and fall of such arid terrain. A jackrabbit bolts down the wash. Piñon jays flock and bank behind a cluster of junipers. The tracks of coyote are everywhere.

Would you believe me when I tell you this is family, kinship with the desert, the breadth of my relations coursing through a wider community, the shock of recognition with each scarlet gilia, the smell of rain.”

Other essays argue for the value of wilderness and the importance of conserving it. However, the struggle to protect wild lands is a difficult battle when corporations are clamoring to develop them. In “To Be Taken,” she recounts how the issue of conservation vs. development and profit divides even her own family. A family gathering at Christmas becomes tense when her uncle vents his frustration at his business’ work being held up by environmental groups because the land they want to develop is a desert tortoise habitat.

Williams’ writing fits well with the desert setting she describes. At first her words seem almost spare, but as you wander deeper into her pages, you see that her thoughts have a quiet power to them that reflect her seemingly barren but actually vibrant surroundings.

“These wildlands are alive. When one of us says, “Look, there’s nothing out there,” what we are really saying is, “I cannot see.”

The Colorado Plateau is wild. There is still wilderness here, big wilderness. Wilderness holds an original presence giving expression to that which we lack, the losses we long to recover, the absences we seek to fill. Wilderness revives the memory of unity. Through its protection, we can find faith in our humanity.”

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert is an evocative, slowly meandering book about the vulnerability, power, and beauty of the desert. Terry Tempest Williams makes convincing arguments for conserving America’s wild lands for future generations in this collection of passionately written pieces.

More book reviews at Books Speak Volumes.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a quest for lady naturalists to counterpoint Edward Abbey's crabby borderline misogyny, I came across Terry Tempest Williams. I wasn't sure-- first couple chapters, and the quartet at the end, are pretty woo woo. But it's reasonable. I fell in love with Utah's slickrock desert and it's well worth being a little wacky over. There is much good, nutritional nature and solitude meditations in here, and some really nice thinking about society vs wilderness.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite nature writers, Williams does an outstanding job describing her love of the red canyons of southern Utah. Through short stories and essays, you feel like you're sharing her experiences.

[Sherri Vigil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy journal keeping. Terry's books seem like that to me and she has opened hers to the public. She definitely writes from her comfortable place.

[Clark Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, transformative book about a lovely, transformative place.

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, by Terry Tempest Williams, was my go-to book on a recent road trip to Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion parks (sadly, we didn’t have time for Bryce Canyon). It was an amazing trip to some of the most breathtaking wild places in the country, and the book was the perfect companion. For the sake of full disclosure, I planned on re-reading Desert Solitaire (Abbey) but was put off by some of the evolving critical research into his racist and sexist views. Williams has all the love and reverence for the wild, quiet places — most notably, the desert landscapes of Utah — without any of the extra baggage, and she’s a far more lyrical writer, a style that suits the haunting desert landscape.

A poet, Williams brings an especially powerful, effective approach in her writing about the transformative power of the desert landscape and why we need to do more to protect these beautiful places from development and the metal claws of the resource-extraction industries. She blends personal experience, stories, poems, selections from other authors and even media coverage to present a well-rounded view of the red-rock wilderness, the people and animals who live there and the ever-encroaching threats. And she presents a larger view of why wilderness and solitude are so important.

It was immensely satisfying to sprawl out in a hotel bed, legs tired from hiking the Fisher Towers trail, drinking a beer and reading about her observations and inspirations while she hiked the very same trail.

Two things kept the book from being a five-star read. The first is simply its age. Red was first published in 2001 and reading about the potential horrors of a pro-industry (or mixed use) conservative administration featuring then-Interior Secretary James Watt fell a little flat given the current crisis circumstances of 2020. That’s no fault of the author, of course, but makes her hopeful attitude about the future ring hollow. Little could Williams predict that environmental regulation under the current administration would make Watt look downright green.

The second criticism is more nuanced. The conservation ethic the author espouses, and in fact most conservationists call for, is steeped in the privilege of wealth. The ability to cultivate a sense of solitude in some of America’s most lovely wild places requires the kind of privilege that simply doesn’t exist for many — most even. And, in her case, picking up and moving to the desert and getting to know the place so intimately is not only impractical, it would be disastrous for wild places if everyone did that.

And as we learned on “free park day” when we happened to arrive in Zion National Park, the era of having quiet, contemplative time alone in these beautiful places simply no longer exists. There were thousands of visitors lined up, and hundreds waiting for each shuttle bus (and this was during the pandemic, so no international visitors were present). And while that number dipped some as the week progressed, finding a place to sit alone and quietly think about the transformative effects of the desert landscape was, simply, impossible.

The desire to experience nature is what threatens nature. The challenge of conservation is that seeking the experiences we value — awe and peace and serenity and stillness — comes at a steep price: more people in the parks. There are simply too many of us, and all too interested in a wilderness experience, for wilderness to long survive, at least as Williams knows it.

The author seeks, admirably, to cultivate an appreciation for nature based on eroticism (separate, of course, from sexuality). But even that requires sharing space with the places we cherish — no matter the appreciation, the “partner” is the same for all of us. I can’t help but think a more appropriate appreciation of nature requires cultivating an inner appreciation for the existence of wilderness, not just the experience of being in the wilderness, and certainly not the selfie-driven desire to merely document our temporary place in it.

It’s challenging, of course, but anything short of this — as our population soars — will replace the potential of a lived experience in wild places with simply getting in line with a stream of other visitors so we can check the box for “took selfie at the famous place.”

Williams writes, “When we are in our urban skin, what we know is largely translated through television, radio, billboards newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, fast paced conversations we catch on the run. We maneuver our way through a maze of shimmering surfaces, concrete, glass, and asphalt. Speed is our adaption to an abstract life.”

My experience in Arches and Zion is that even the desert can’t quiet people into leaving that pace behind. The only thing that changed for the throngs of people was the setting. At first, we were a little irritated, but on deeper thought, made our peace with it. Why shouldn’t people want to see and experience these amazing places, even if only quickly and from a moving car? Thinking they exist for a handful of people to have, in essence, a spiritual moment, creates only aggravation and conflict.

I left the park thinking that what we really should focus on is cultivating an appreciation of quiet contemplation, of the magic of life, at ALL times, and one that — hopefully — will drive us to cherish and more thoughtfully sustain all of the environments we live in, including wilderness. It’s certainly easier in the wilderness, but we must be able to access this peace and quiet, this thoughtful life, no matter our surroundings. Perhaps with just an occasional visit to the “real” thing.

Looking at the current dumpster fire of 2020, my hopes are not high. But reading authors such as Williams reminds me that there is a better way, that doesn’t exist only in Utah, national parks or the wilderness. It exists inside each of us.

[Maggie Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only are TTW’s words beautiful and wholehearted, but so is her craft itself. The way she juxtaposes stories, creates art on the page with placement of words, and the flow from fact to fiction, she exemplifies the nuance of truth in the natural and the human. She creates a case by having a profound connection to people and place, and writes with the sincerity, indifference, and deep reciprocity with the desert landscape.

[Lori Malone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another nice read about protecting wild spaces in the American Southwest. Similar to Desert Solitaire but somewhat more dreamy, such that I sometimes lost the plot. Maybe there isn’t a plot - just a message that we must contend for all God’s creatures in order to truly be wise stewards, for ourselves and for future generations.

[Jeff Lochhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a strong chance that if I had read this at a different time I may have enjoyed it more. On too many occasions I would begin to daydream only to find I couldn’t remember anything of what I’d just read and couldn’t figure how anything connected. Some sections of an essay would be fantastic only to be lost in the deluge of random thought associations Williams would use. At the end of the day though, it still drew me back to the fact that I want to explore more of the area (Southern Utah and Northern Arizona) and that we only have one chance not to screw up the natural beauty of our country because once it’s been raped for profit there is no going back.

[Amber Brusak · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a book about a place I hold dear from a lady’s perspective.

[Sophia Leiker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eloquent, poetic, beautiful writing. Reflections on the magic of the desert, reflections on the need for protection of these sacred spaces, reflections on their power. Definitely recommend reading this book outside under the sun. It especially hits close to home for those who have experienced these places first hand.

QUOTES:

“It’s strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirited that have moved on.”

“If the Desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There’s no place to hide so we are found.”

“ The fire now bears the last testament to trees. I blow into the religious caverns with wood and watch them burn brightly. My breath elucidates each yellow room as I remember the body as sacrament”

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read this powerful book in my reading group..... sadly I got distracted somehow and could not remember the author's name although the subject matter has impacted me greatly in the years since I read it. Williams' name never came back to me until recently when it came up in, of all places, a memorial service for my cousin.... Suddenly I had the link back to RED. I WILL finish at some point.

I am a devout believer in the importance of leaving places UNTOUCHED, UNCOMPROMISED, UNADULTERATED in ANY way by human beings. THE IMPORTANCE OF WILDERNESS for its own sake is what she writes about with passion and insistence. In this world where we impose ourselves on everything, with a human-based rational for doing so, no matter what the consequences, I whole-heartedly agree with her. STAY AWAY! LEAVE WILDERNESS ALONE. NO PEOPLE, NO ROADS, NO RECREATION, NO DEVELOPMENT OF ANY KIND. We MUST stop imposing our will on the planet. Otherwise nothing will survive.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terry Tempest Williams has alot of wilderness in her soul. I love her for that. She says that until you can cut your arm and bleed red sand, you do not own the redrock country of southern Utah. I can feel the desert around me as I read her words. Her writing is moving and lyrical, however this book is difficult for me. As a Mormon who also believes in conservationism, I love that my Religion has so much room for every good thing. But TTW leaves me feeling a bit hollow in alot of ways. She says that there are too many people. I wonder then, which ones does she think are too many? She uses some lds scripture and history to make her points, but I wonder how she rationalizes the incongruity between some of her ideas and lds teachings. If she wants to belong to the wild completely, she seems to agree with the religion partially. This may be too much of a judgement to make from just what is written here, but since she brings it up, I wonder how she resolves it.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I keep trying, and failing, to enjoy Terry Tempest Williams's writing. When I first read Refuge as a first-year college student, I was not a fan. I later taught that same first-year literature course and had to teach Refuge in class. Through that experience, I came to enjoy the book a bit more, but only a bit. Before my recent trip to Bryce and Zion in Utah, her book Red came up on a recommended reading list, and I decided to give Terry Tempest Williams's writing another go. It was a quick read, and very informative, but I simply don't enjoy her poetic (to me, melodramatic) writing style. That said, I am glad to have read the book because of what I learned about Utah's natural history and the then-current (and still ongoing) political battles over Utah's land. A for informational content, C for enjoyment.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection resonated with me as a fellow lover of the high Utah desert. Some of the essays are truly stunning: Ode to Silence, A Prayer for a Wild Millennium, and Wild Mercy in particular.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do these places have to say to us as human beings at this point in time? What do they have to say about life in the Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic eras? What do they have to say about the erosion and uplift of our souls and imagination?

Emptiness in the desert is the fullness of space, a fullness of space that eliminates time. The desert is time, exposed time, geologic time. One needs time on the desert to see.


A reread as I was travelling to Zion, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Grand Canyon. I am still in awe that I live within a day’s drive of these extraordinary places. If you had told me long ago I would be fluent in their language and colors and lights like I am, I would never have believed. I am still the New York city girl that I was briefly, and so much more, and I have been thinking lately of how to reach others with what I have learned to help them see the value in these places and stopping the greed and development in them. I am certain the average person in the world (average in income and life situation) may not care because they have so much more to worry about.

I am reading some memoirs lately and first, I am thinking how narcissistic a memoir is these days, less about redemption or sharing deep wisdom, and secondly, how limited their view of the planet it. It is a hard fact, that tuning into geologic time and seeing it visible here makes you different than others, but I am committed to trying to teach even a little. Even people close to me don’t really care and perhaps don’t even see the beauty. But I will love the world as Mary Oliver says, and try.

The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is theirs. Perhaps the wildness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands now.

I know this country Williams lives in, it is seriously THE red rock country. Its red does stain and get into every pore and surface. It really does. It is Mars, but more intensely red. Or can pictures even on the surface of the planet a gazillion miles from here really relay the true color? What would Mars look like to an insect for who the yellow flower is really violet?

For those who have wandered through the serpentine canyons of the Escalante, floated down the Green or Colorado Rivers, biked the White Rime trial in Canyonlands, or thought they found God in the expanse of the Kaiparowits Plateau in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, this is not hard to understand: falling in love with a place, being in love with a place, wanting to care of a place and see it remain intact as a wild piece of the planet.

I hear more in this reading about participative democracy (more than just voting) and while I know it is true, there are levels and as much as I hear her call and know it is important, I have other callings I have to nurture, as a nurse and as a photographer. I get involved in ways I can, but I am not on the planning committee for my neighborhood or city or even know who or what they are. If you can, please do. It is the power of this planet, and it is corrupted and neglected by most of us and why the majority of Americans favor some form of gun control but an 18 year old can but a weapon of war and kill easily.

…maybe, just maybe, before the last little town is corrupted and the last of the unroaded and undeveloped wildness is given over to dreams of profit, maybe it will be love, finally, love for the land for its own sake and for what it holds of beauty and joy and spiritual redemption, that will make the redrock country of southern Utah not a battlefield but a revelation. T.H. Watkins

Although we have mountains here of extraordinary stature and elevations- the LaSals in Moab rising to 12,00 feet- the high points of excursions into the Colorado Plateau are usually points of descent. Down canyons. Down rivers. Down washes left dry, scoured, and sculpted by sporadic flash floods. It is a landscape of extremes. You learn sooner or later to find an equilibrium within yourself…desert as teacher. Desert as mirage. What you come to see on the surface is not what you come to know. Emptiness in the desert is the fullness of space, a fullness of space that eliminates time. The desert is time, exposed time, geologic time. One needs time on the desert to see.
For those who have not experienced the sublime nature of Utah’s canyon country, I invite you to imagine what I might be like to see and feel the world from the inside out. Be prepared to be broken open like a rock fallen from a once secure place.

I believe that spiritual resistance- the ability to stand firm at the center of our convictions when everything around us asks us to concede- tat our capacity to face the harsh measures of a life, comes from a 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 best retrieved in solitude amidst the stillness of days in the desert.

I want to write my way from the margins to the center. I want to speak the language of the grasses, rooted yet soft and supple in the presence of the wind before a storm. I want to write in the form of migrating geese like an arrow pointing south toward a direction of safety. I want to keep my words so wild so that even if the land and everything we hold dear is destroyed by shortsightedness and greed, there is a record of beauty and passionate participation by those who saw what was coming. Listen. Below us. Above us. Inside us. Come. This is all there is.

Just when you believe in your own sense of place, plan on getting lost…the terror of the country you thought you knew bears gifts of humility. The landscape that makes you vulnerable also makes you strong. This is the bedrock of southern Utah’s beauty: its chameleon nature according to light and weather and season encourages us to make peace with our own contradictory nature.

There are songs still being sung and stories that long to be told in the places where people lived thousands of yeasts ago, places that braid the Colorado Plateau together. In so many ways, the Anasazi have never left. The Hopi elders have told us, it is time for a healing. We are in the process of becoming Earth. We are not separate. We belong ot a much larger community that we know. We are here because of love.

Ringing

This silence

This silence- is the bedrock of

our democracy.

What do we wish for? To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather thatn what we are separate from. Edward O Wilson wrote, “our troubles arise from the fact that we do not know who we are and cannot agree on what we want to be….humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire knowledge on which an enduring ethic can be built.”

It is strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide so we are found.

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.

I write in solitude born in community. I write as a form of translation. I write as an act of slowness. I writes an exercise in pure joy. I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox.

I write because it is the way I take long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.

I am interested in what astrophysicists are telling us about the status of the universe: in the post big bang expansion of space, there is a recession of galaxies. When I hear the questions they are asking- do we live in flat space or curved space or both? Might we actually live in a ten-dimensional universe?- I feel such excitement over all we do not know. There theories translate into my mind to magnetic poetry, particles so small, concepts so large, like the existence of neutralinos, minuscule particles that rain down on us during the day and filter back up through us in the night, from the earth to the universe; these thoughts spark a narrative of hope so bright, I believe them when they say shine matters., that the way we measure the mass of a star is through its light. We can weigh the galaxy by measuring light.

For as far and wide I can see, past the Henry Mountains, beyond the canyons of the Escalante, hundreds of miles west, there is not a glimpse of civilization, no evidence of an imprint, not a road, not a building, not any sign whatsoever of human habitation, only the eroding crust of Earth splayed open. Aware of my own breathing, I enter the calm indifference of the Colorado Plateau. My eyes soften. The landscape blurs. The sky, so much sky, seems to lift with the swell of light. The blue horizon curves down.

Where I live, the open space of desire is red. The desert before me is rose is pink is scarlet is magenta is salmon. The colors are swimming in light as it changes constantly, with cloud cover with rain with wind with light, delectable light, delicious light. The palette of erosion is red, is running red water, red river, my own blood flowing downriver…the landscape can be read. A flight of birds. A flight of words.

I want to learn the language of the desert, to be able to translate this landscape of red into a language of heat that quickens the heart and gives courage to silence, a silence that is heard.

When you were born and took your first breath, different colors

And different kinds of wind entered through your fingertips

And the whorl on the top of your head. Within us, as we breathe,

Are the light breezes that cool a summer afternoon,

Within us the tumbling rains that precede rain,

Within us sheets of hard-thundering rain,

Within us dust-filled layers of wind that sweep in from mountains,

Within us gentle night flutters that lull us to sleep.

To see this, blow on your hand now.

Each sound we make evokes the power of these winds

And we are, at once, gentle and powerful.

Luci Tapahonso, Navajo Nation's First Poet Laureate

These wildlands are alive. The Colorado Plateau is wild. There is still wilderness here, big wilderness. Wilderness holds an original presence giving expression to that which we lack, the losses we long to recover, the absences we seek to fill. Wilderness revives the memory of unity. Through its protection, we can find faith in our humanity.

Can we learn to speak a language indigenous to the heart?

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 that 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 Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the soul of the community. This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind where each dialect is not only heard but understood.

In the vastness of the desert, I want to create my days as a ceremony around s l o w n e s s, an homage to tortoises and snakes, who understand what it means to move thoughtfully, deliberately, who allow the heat of sand to create currents in their blood…

On top of the ridge, I can see for miles. Mesas, buttes, the sandstone folds of Fisher Tower. The light is advancing across Professor Valley, creating a kaleidoscope of oranges, reds, and violets that the hands of time keeps turning minute by minute. Inside this erosional landscape where all colors eventually bleed into the river, it is hard to desire anything but time and space.

In the desert there is space. Space is the twin sister of time. If we have open space then we have open time to breathe, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely, so freely in a world out minds have forgotten but our bodies remember. Time and space. This partnership is holy. In these redrock canyons, time creates space-an arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky. We remember why we love the desert; it is our tactile response to light, to silence, and to stillness.

On any given day, the river is light, liquid light, a travelling mirror in the desert.

Love this river, stay by it, learn from it…it seemed ot him that whoever understood this river and its secrets, would understand much more, many secrets, all secrets. Siddhartha.

What is the composition of a river, these boulders, these birds, our own flesh? What is the composition of a poem except a series of musical lines? River. River music. Day and night. Shadow and light. The roar and roll of cobbles being churned by the current is strong. This river has muscle when flexed against stone, carved stone, stones that appear as waves of rock, secret knowledge known only through engagement.

In this country, wind is the architect of beauty, movement in the midst of peace. This is what I seek as a writer. There is a physicality to beauty, to any creative process. Perhaps an index to misery is when we no longer perceive beauty-that which stirs the heart…

A kind of equilibrium returns. We stand steady on Earth. The external space I see is the internal space I feel.

How can we begin to understand what wilderness is if we have never experienced a place that is unaltered and unagitated by our own species? How are we to believe in the perfect mind of the natural world if we have not seen it, touched it, felt it, or found our own sense of proportion in the presence of wildness. If there is a greatness to the American spirit, a spirit aligned with freedom and faith, surely its origin is to be found in the expanse of landscapes that have nurtured us: coastlines, woodlands, wetlands, prairies, mountains, and deserts.

Aldo Leopold asks, “will we now exterminate this thing that made us Americans?” The extinction of places we love may not come as a result of global warming or a meteorite, but as a result of our lack of imagination. We have forgotten what wildness means, that it exists, here, now.

What are we to make of our own short stay on this beloved blue planet of ours as it rotates and revolves in space? To keep myself steady, I walk, one foot in front of the other. Small things are notices, evidence that I am not alone: the abundance of silver berries on juniper, the grasses where deer have bedded down. To move through wild country in the desert or in the woods is to engage in a walking mediation, a clearing of the mind, where we remember what we have so easily lost.

The shape of time and space is different in wilderness. Time is something encountered through the senses not imposed upon the mind…What we know in a wild place is largely translated through the body. When we are in out urban skin, what we know is largely translated through television, billboards…internet. In wildness we can saunter, every step creating a more informed muscle. The depth of a canyon as it twists and turns corresponds with the surprises and complexities of our own minds now free to wander. We cover more ground than we ever thought possible. We stop at a pool and see the reflection of our post-Paleolithic selves.

We believe we need more wilderness not less, that wilderness is not just an idea but a place, not merely an abstraction but the difference between an intact ecosystem and a fragmented one. I believe we need more wilderness in order to be more complete human beings, to not be fearful of the animals that we are, an animal that bows to the incomparable power of natural forces when standing on the north rim of Grand Canyon, an animal who weeps over the sheer beauty of migrating cranes above the Bosque del Apache…

The language of law and science used so successfully to defend what wilderness has been in the past century must now be fully joined with language of the heart to illuminate what these lands mean to the future… we recognize an indomitable spirit in the land and in our bones that cradles life’s DNA; wilderness is the great map to our own evolution.

In Grand Canyon, we are witnesses to an opening of time, vertical and horizontal at once. Between these crossbars of geology is a silent sermon on how the world was formed. Seas advanced and retreated. Dunes now stand in stone. Volcanoes erupted and lave cooled. Garnets shimmer and separate schist from granite. It is sculptured time to be touched, even tasted, our mineral content in the desert.

[Yaaresse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time I saw the red rock country of the Four Corners area, I was awed. It is awesome. Not in the way the word is currently over-used, as a verbal hiccup to overpraise the mundane and trivial, but the true definition of awesome: inspiring an overwhelming sensation of reverence, admiration, and fear.

To put that is some perspective, I am most definitely not an outdoor enthusiast. (People think I am joking when I say my idea of camping involves room service. I most definitely am not joking.) When Tempest Williams describes the sensual sensation of drinking from a dessert stream, she thinks about the life-giving moisture, the sensual cool hand sustaining the fragile life of the region. Me? I'm thinking "No way would I do that. You don't know what kind of heavy metals from mining operations or fall-out from weapons testing, or just bacteria from toad skin and lizard shit is in that puddle!" Suffice it to say, I appreciate nature, but from a distance and with Britta filter in my water bottle.

Terry Tempest Williams wrote Red to call attention to the the fight to protect and preserve the fragile ecological balance of red rock country. The book was published shortly after 9/11. At the time, depending on where you were standing, the country was either desperate to break become energy self-sufficient and tap any resources to that end or corporations and politicians were only too happy to use feed fear in order to finally be able to turn a profit on what some saw as wasted land. The issue of land rights and state vs federal vs private use is a long, contentious one in the west. TTW manages to show how complicated and personal the fight is without coming off like an extremist or irrational.

The book is not only about environmental politics. TTW also writes about the land as a living entity, as inspiration for her poetry, and as a powerful soul-shredding/soul-healing experience. Some of her poetry is included, as in a transcript of her testimony before the Senate. Her writing is often lyrical, sensual, and tinted with the fine red dust of the dessert southwest. This is the book I was hoping for when I read Trespass a few weeks ago. It's still part memoir, part non-fiction, part pleas, but it has balance and a more self-aware tone. I can't help but compare this (favorably) to The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy, which was published maybe a year after this book.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terry Tempest Williams always makes me remember why I love Utah’s red rock deserts—the dry hot air, red dust, swirling Colorado. After reading this I want to roll around in the mud, sleep under the clear sky, and watch the moonrise reflect off the canyon walls.

But then I remember my last trip to Moab and the hoards of people up Mill Creek, leaving their bags of dog shit and garbage everywhere. I remember the creeping sprawl of houses expanding on all sides. And I remember my favorite river beaches now constantly swarming with college students and metro families who treat the river like either one more spring break destination or a ride at Disney World.

I fell in love with the desert in the spring of 1990. I was a high school freshman at a small boarding school in central Utah. Every spring we spent a week on the river, after driving the five hours south from Sanpete County to Moab. I will never forget the sheer red cliffs reaching up to a perfect blue sky. This Kansas girl had never seen a landscape so utterly raw and beautiful. My teachers introduced me to the books of Ed Abbey and Aldo Leopold and told all of us kids stories of the evil Glen Canyon Dam that killed the natural landscape and produced Lake “Foul.” They reminded us all that this was sacred land and we were to treat it as such. They also told us that if we didn’t fight to protect it it would disappear.

And now 30 years later, it seems like we have lost the fight. The dam still stands and the urban sprawl marches on. The Red Rock Wilderness Act has yet to make it through Congress. It’s enough to make me want to weep or better yet grab some dynamite, a monkey wrench, and get down to business.

Anyway, this book is just gorgeous. Williams’s prose is just perfection; you can feel the desert heat emanating from each page. She shows us why wilderness is worth protecting and what we will all lose if we let it keep disappearing.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in Utah, camping in Southern Utah, hiking in the desert. I loved the adventure of it, but never really saw it as beautiful. In fact, I always thought the desert was kind of ugly. I've now lived on the East Coast for 11 years, surrounded by the green that I always longed for (and that I love). But a few years ago, on one of our annual trips back home, I revisited Southern Utah with my children and saw the desert with new eyes. I finally saw it for the other-worldly majesty that it is. And my heart became truly attached to it. I brought home a piece of sandstone that I display in my New York City apartment to remember where I come from, to tie me to the beautiful, unique land I love.

On that particular trip, I purchased Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert at a Canyonlands National Park gift shop. I wanted to carry home with me some semblance of the feelings I developed on that visit. I wanted something that, even when physically far removed from that singular, enchanted setting, would recall and stoke my new passion for the desert that had ignited in me on that special trip. This book does just that. Thank you, Ms. Williams, for your love of that special land of our shared origins. Thank you for your gifts of meditation, vision, expression, and passion. And thank you for the crucial work you do to protect that land, its creatures, its treasures, and its history.

[Kenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terry Tempest Williams' writing I feel deep in my bones. Having lived in the red rocks of Utah, I feel so drawn to and feel connected with her writing. These essays focus on the landscape and politics of the red rock wilderness in Utah.  It was really meaningful and important to read about Utah and national wilderness politics including the proposed Redrock Wilderness Act and the Antiquities Act of 1906.  I loved her essay on Aldo Leopold (love that she is an Aldo Leopold fan! Is it possible to fangirl about her being a fangirl for another author I love?) and the essay An Ode to Slowness. Her essay "A Letter to Deb Clow" is one of the most beautiful pieces, maybe the most, I've ever read on writing. The section of essays from "Coyote's Canyon" and the "Water, Land, Air, Etc" sections didn't draw me in as much, I think I just didn't have enough context for these essays to have gathered as much meaning out of them as I did the others. I would love to get more contexts for these essays because from my understanding, there was some influence and collaboration on some of these with or from local indigenous folks (although I may be wrong here).  I always have more room to grow, learn, and take away. If I were to recommend one book from the two I've read from her, it would be "Erosion: Essays of Undoing" but this read solidified that Terry Tempest Williams is one of my favorite nature writers.

[David Doty · Rating 5 out of 5]

My two favorite authors are Wallace Stegner and Terry Tempest Williams. Stegner's fiction(Angle of Repose, Big Rock Candy Mountain, etc.) and nonfiction (Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, etc.) books are raw and searing accounts of the geography and peoples of the American West. Williams' nonfiction descriptions of Western wilderness, from national parks to bird refuges to scorching deserts, are beautiful and haunting.

In Red, Williams writes a series of meditations on the red rock landscapes of southern Utah and northern Arizona, and with each one evokes emotion and passion that leaves the reader longing to follow the same paths she is walking. Having spent time in the canyons and arroyos of southern Utah, I could smell the pinyon and juniper, see the Ansazi ruins and petroglyphs, and feel the sand and rock beneath my feet as I read her provocative prose.

You can't read Williams and not care about wilderness, as both an idea and a physical location. If you don't care much about wilderness, this book might just prompt you to get out and explore to understand how restorative and necessary it is. If you already care about wilderness, this book (and all of Williams' other writings) will underscore and strengthen the conviction that runs bone deep in your soul after you experience these amazing places.

[Hash Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This adorable little book manages to be incredibly approachable without being any less profound than the writing that I have come to expect from Terry Tempest Williams. If you live within a days drive of red-rock you should read it. It is breathtaking, and so far the only thing I've found that manages to capture that bewitched feeling that only the desert has made me feel.

Williams guides her readers through the processs of connecting to the land by capturing its beauty and explaining the wisdom that accompanies it. The book is full of delightfull vignetts about desert life and finding meaning, sollace, and purpose in the desert. It speaks to a way of life that is foreign to suberbia but somehow, maybe on an instinctual level, awakens something old, familiar, and right. It's a sad book. But only because it is about something that we seem to have lost without realizing it. Williams traces a fight to retain and regain this loss, with an insightful and nuanced overview of desert conservation in the political landscape of Utah, Colorado, and most suprizingly her own home. At the center of it all is her story, a reflection on living as a resistent member of species that struggles to curb its destructive tendencies, and worse, fails to connect with its own nature, its own community, and the land of its own habitate.

[Angelica LeMinh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terry Tempest Williams is a very special writer. I got this book as a gift from a white man of a certain age group, and passed it along to another white man of that same age.

In reality, another book of hers, When Women Were Wolves was the gift that the same man gave me that resonated in a way that he had no way of knowing, and I feel this one was closer to his own values.

The desert is a place that I'd like to visit one day, and this book offered a curated peek from a POV that I value a lot. I started this at the same time as Educated, so I suppose the Mormon women were trying to tell me something. Or I was asking them something.

"Speed is our adaptation to an abstract life." (186)

"It is our nature to be aroused-not once but again and again. Where do we find the strength not to be pulled apart by our passions?" (208)

"But I believe our desire to share is more potent and trustworthy than our desire to be alone." (196)

"Ashes. Ashes. Death is the natural conclusion of love." (207)

The story of the frog necklace really moved me. The rest of it had its moments. She is a great writer, this one just wasn't my favourite-maybe I am the least connected to the subject matter, or maybe my expectations have just been heightened because I read her later work first.