The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

by Terry Tempest Williams

“Williams is a master . . . She gives us a reason to follow her refusing to look away from the degradation, in hopes of preserving the wild places we have left.”— Outside Magazine

From the acclaimed nature writer and New York Times bestselling author, a revelatory work of narrative nonfiction exploring beauty, climate change, and transformative moments of hope in a world beset by uncertainty

Whether we believe it or not, rapid change is upon us. I am searching for grace.

In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking hope wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. The Glorians can be as small as an ant ferrying a coyote willow blossom to its queen or as commonplace as the night sky. But what they can collectively teach us—about the radical act of attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds—is immense.

Journeying through encounters with the Glorians in the red rock desert of Utah during the pandemic to Harvard University where she teaches in the Divinity School, Williams weaves a story of astonishing personal and societal insight. As she grapples with the unsettled state of the world, she turns not to despair but to deep reflection. She sees how the Glorians are calling us all to attention, not as an army, but as fellow inhabitants of our sacred, threatened home. They remind us of the power of contact between species and the profound courage—and awareness—it will take to dream a more cohesive future into being.

Wise and lyrical, The Glorians is a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention. In a modern world filled with increasing noise and anxiety, Terry Tempest Williams offers honest sustenance for the mind and spirit and distinguishes herself again as a trusted voice to whom we can turn to more fully understand our times.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Memoir, Spirituality, Science, Self Help

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2026

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

[Book Riot Community]

Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026:

As a fellow Utahn, I may be biased in my love for Terry Tempest Williams' nature essays. Her latest collection, in which she finds the sacred in ordinary moments, sounds especially needed. It speaks to the desire I and many others have to express spirituality, whether that's a connection to the divine or just something greater than themselves. By observing small beauties in nature, she finds hope to sustain her through a global sense of despair. —Andy Minshew

[Debbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essays, stories and musings. The writing is warm and intimate.; beautiful. This is Terry Tempest Williams at her best.
When she writes about nature she remembers we are part of the landscape. The Glorians are the divine essence, the spark she describes as the holy ordinary. The book is divided in sections. The first essays take place during the pandemic, they are not a medicalized account, what is in the forefront is what we lost and what we gained and what we've forgotten now that it is over.
My favorite section is Home where the author writes short essays on the creatures she shares her world with. There are Rattlesnakes, Black Widow spiders, horny toads, ladybugs and butterflies, All are given equal appreciation and attention.
The essential feeling here is hope in a chaotic, complex, confusing time. The book is an inspiration. Highly recommended.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance reader copy.

[Hannah Chadwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick disclaimer, this book is TOTALLY outside of my usual reading comfort zone, so take this review with a grain of salt.

I honestly have no idea how to rate this book. I feel like there were some really great tidbits in here. I had a physical copy that I annotated and I highlighted, tabbed, and noted quite a bit! There were also some really odd things that I was very…. off put by.
Some essays I would rate 5 stars, where others I just skipped because I was a bit uncomfy reading it.
This did feel very soapboxish but hey! It’s a nonfiction book of essays so idk what I was expecting.

I think if you are looking for something about climate change, divinity, and common humanity, this is a very excellent book!
If you are a regular Joe Shmoe (much like myself), who mostly reads for enjoyment, I probably wouldn’t recommend this.

I read this for a book club and I’m very interested to see what we talk about.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A Glorian is an encounter.
A Glorian is a meeting
with elan vital.
A Glorian is a moment of grace.”

“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”

In her new collection of essays, Williams takes a deep look at the past six years- living through Covid and standing witness as climate change wreaks havoc around the world.
She still teaches at Harvard and the essays alternate between her life there and her beloved life with her husband in Utah. She also examines her own spirituality, along her close connection to the land. It also helps that she is such a fine, insightful writer. Highly recommended.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

we have been living a myth. we have constructed a dream. we have cajoled and seduced ourselves into believing we are the center of all things: with plants, and other sentient beings from ants to lizards to coyotes to grizzly bears, subservient to our desires and needs. this is a lethal lie that will be seen by future generations as a grave, and a grave moral sin committed and buried in the name of ignorance and arrogance.

terry tempest williams writes so beautifully, so openly, so thoughtfully. amidst anguish, finding awe — and always perspective. the glorians shifts largely between williams' beloved desert southwest and her time teaching at harvard divinity school, blending nature writing and memoir. the tiny and the tremendous, the horror and the hope: wherever williams seems to turn her focus and care, she uncovers and reflects and connects the personal and the profound. at once a balm and a bulwark.

[Mark Valentine · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking for a contemporary book that aligns with the tradition of H. D. Thoreau's classic book, Walden, Tempest Williams's book is for you. Like Walden, it is an odd compendium of biography, nature writing, memoir, environmentalism, poetry, scripture, spirituality, and climate change (yes, HDT was a proto climate scientist, recording in his journals the dates when flowers bloomed that we use as evidence today of variation). She even invents a one-word book title, like Thoreau, who used a one-word place name for his title. She also takes her class to walk around Walden Pond and seek the spirit of the Nature Bard together (before an odd act of vandalism occurs).

Tempest Williams writes for our age, though. She channels creativity, respect, and love for our fellow beings. She writes of flash floods, snakes, black widow spiders, eclipses (note the cover), rivers, the Divinity Tree, her pets, and sunrises. She writes of painters, poets, medicine shamans, ancestors, teachers, and wood carvers. She writes of a Buddhist calligrapher, Native herbalists, Harvard professors, and her husband. She writes of prayer, meditation, and rituals for diverse religions. She's a pantheist and a spiritualist, a pilgrim and a teacher. And she writes damn good sentences!

Walden fans, this book is for you. Seekers, this book is for you, too.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

give me all the TTW books. she’s an absolute favorite and this book was no exception. everything she writes makes me fall more in love with the desert, and particularly the Southwest, and nature and all beings. read this book.

[Jennifer]

Wow.

I began this with such high hopes and was instantly grateful I’d found it. Now, I just feel like a Mean Girl. Williams, at first, oozes the same meditative, loving reverence for all beings of Robin Wall Kimmerer… until she runs roughshod through sanity like a newly released tradwife on a bucking bronco in a seedy country bar on dollar shot night. What on earth did I just read?

I bailed after the nauseating divinity tree story. A tree being cut down elicits the same despair she felt in losing her brother to suicide, yet she did nothing to intervene on the tree’s behalf but weep, wail, and worship it. In fact, she gave more airtime to her intimate love of this tree than her brother.

After deciding I’d had enough, I began reading reviews to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. Oh-ho-ho! Thinly veiled sexual fantasies of lying with buffaloes and all the cat stories (where was her reverence and responsible love for her cat while it was alive?) have, at least, soothed my conscience for feeling such mean-spirited revulsion. Rather than a sign of meanness, it sounds like my radar was right on the money.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just want to be wherever she is and to see the world the way she does. And yet: How does she not get that the east coast is literally on the coast. How many times did she lament being far from the ocean when Harvard is not even 10 miles from the ocean. This really pissed me off. She lives in Utah without tides or horizons FFS. Throughout the book she lamented climate change and the catastrophic consequences of human emissions yet had 20 people travel from Boston to Utah for a field trip. And it is absolutely animal abuse to let cats roam a desert. FYou, no longer a favorite author. I am kicking myself for having preordered copies for 3 friends just because she wrote it. One lives in Boston, another in Annapolis, and all share their lives with cats.

[Grace Sanchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

To all the preciousness of every single thing everywhere she bids us to pay attention and to begin with love.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Terry Tempest Williams, she has a new book out called The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. The title is from a dream the author had during the early days of the pandemic in which the author finds herself at Harvard, where she is a writer-in-residence in real life. In the dream she is climbing a tower. Reaching the top, she sees a female colleague, whom she approaches.

“Do you remember the vow you made to us?” the professor asks.
“Remind me,” William says.
“Your vow is to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians,” the professor says.

And with that the author wakes up. But wait, what is a Glorian?

For Williams, like for all of us, the pandemic was a “great quieting.” It’s hard to believe, but that was the first time I ever heard the sound of baby birds singing in a nest. They were baby juncos. And I’d never been in a quiet enough place to actually hear them chirping like crickets.

Everything is so loud in Southern California. There are always planes streaking over head and so many police helicopters — and the constant sound of the leaf blowers and relentless construction noise. But during the pandemic, the world got so quiet, especially during the beginning of the lockdown. I remember the startle of hearing a huge grapefruit falling off the tree and hitting the ground with a thud in our backyard. How had I never been present for that before?

For Terry Tempest Williams, her dream haunts her. What is a Glorian? No matter how hard she looks, she comes up empty… until one day, she is transfixed watching an ant carry a magenta flower from a blooming coyote willow tree across a long stretch of her backyard… And she is startled by the magnificence of the world.

That is a Glorian, she says.

And so she defines a Glorian as an encounter with élan vital (“vital momentum”)—a meeting with grace. It is the “holy ordinary” in the book’s title, something I’ve always referred to as Wonderworld —from Melville’s "the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open” in Moby Dick.

I love it when she is talking about Utah ad the Great Salt Lake... love when she describes her husband and those dragonflies... She makes me wonder about the difference between noticing versus witnessing...

Like the author, I also thought covid would be a great awakening--a moment when there could have been a serious reset... During covid, I kept thinking that if anything good could come out of the tragedy of all the suffering, it would be if Americans could do a big reset. Maybe start working together to consume less, pollute less, try and go a little lighter on the planet. Quiet down, perhaps look back to a time when the turning of seasons was marked collectively, when certain days were set apart from other days, when the rhythms of a community's life together created something like punctuation in time.

But before we knew it, we were back to business as usual. Or dare I say it, the spinning world was back with a vengeance!

Wonderful book. Like all her books.

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love her earlier works, including her book about her relationship to the National Parks. The parts of this book centered around her home were special, but the dwelling at Harvard was tedious and did not speak to me of any Gloriana. The tale of the Divinity Tree is interesting, but other than some quiet protest; it does not appear that anyone, either student or professor dared risk anything to save the tree. Although Williams often speaks in metaphors, her tale of wanting to lie down with buffalo ( which is hard to read as anything other than actually having sex with an animal) was too much for me. I did finish the book, after that bit; but the entirety of the book was slow, scattered. The last straw was her story about losing her beloved??? Cat to an outdoor predator, when she and her husband did little to protect that poor cat. Allowing cats to wander outside for a walk about in any area with predators is irresponsible. She can write all the ‘letters from my cat to sooth my guilt’ she wants to, but they set the stage for this to happen. So, a 3 star from me; and probably no more purchases of her books.

[Eliza]

I fear this is giving substack book

[Gaetano Venezia · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a bizarre, almost perverse, form of empathy and compassion and spirituality that bends so far towards the nonhuman and the mysterious that it disregards immediate and obvious human suffering. The author talks seriously about lynching trees, about simple organisms as people, and doesn’t have words for her husband, while she has hours worth of a letter for her new cat who died: these are poetic uses of words that might stand up in the right context but they are treated as matter of fact and used in an expansive way that ignores what’s left behind. There’s none of the needed nuance toward the tradeoffs of using language in this way that diminishes humans—who are the only ones truly capable of conceiving of and experiencing suffering (the metacognition and conscious awareness of loss).

The author does have beautiful and interesting descriptions of nature. But these reflections are scattered and don’t tie in enough to a central theme of the Glorians (which is itself pretty vague and dreamlike) or anything else.

Could not finish.

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult for me to review this book. I lived for many years in Utah and I first “discovered” her writing through Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. She writes incredibly beautifully, with such passion and powers of observation. Yet, this book made me immensely sad. TTW and I are of the same generation and thus have lived through the many changes - environmental, political, social, etc- taking place in our world. I admire her optimism, hope and seeking of a new language to move humanity forward. Unfortunately, I do not share her optimism although I do believe in the power of the “holy ordinary “. I hope she is right and that “whatever future may be collapsing before our eyes, we can dream a new world into being” (p. 306).

[Ashley Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is TTWs attempt at putting words to her spiritual journey over the last few years. I love her concept of the Holy Ordinary.

This would probably have been a 5 star book for me if it weren’t for the pandemic fatigue that makes even reading about those years in hindsight feel insufferable. Luckily that was only a few chapters in this book. Though I do appreciate how impactful those years were on TTWs spiritual journey.

[Lydia Freier · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of those books where you want to underline every other sentence…feels sacred, so aligned with how i’ve been feeling, what i needed to hear. grateful i found this

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams writes into the long quiet left by a global pandemic. Not a story in the usual sense. Fragments. Observations. A life measured in small reckonings. A tree cut down. The water rising. A people rising. A cat gone missing into the wider world.

Tempest does not force meaning. Lets it come slow. What is lost is not always named outright but it is there in the margins. The land endures. The mind circles back. What remains is attention. And in intention, something like healing, though it does not claim it.

[Rebecca Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read most everything this author has published. Her connection to the Southwest moves me deeply. As a Unitarian Universalist I appreciate her embracing of all religions. I especially appreciate her connection to nature.

[Mandy]

Was listening to this on audiobook and absolutely loved the beginning, a beautiful meditation on spirituality and nature and human connection.

Got 55% of the way in before girlie starts talking about how she had her sexual awakening watching bison and posed the question, “If we can be genderfluid, why not species fluid?” aaaand I had to stop because WTF 😂

[Linda Elsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book touched my soul. The chapter about the Divinity Tree tore me open. Recently, a favorite place I hike was subject to a "timber project" which is a polite way of saying trees were ripped apart, landscapes altered. I now feel disoriented hiking on trails I could have walked blindfolded. Without a thought, the landmarks of my daily life are gone. The trees I reached to to touch, the trees I looked for each time hiking those trails, gone. I know I am not the only one that feels this loss but it has hurt my heart. This chapter brought me to tears because I could feel the ache. I love this book for more reasons than one chapter of course but I will carry part of it with me.
The chapter "The Dress" had me laughing outloud!

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Thanks Grove Atlantic for the ARC. Truly.]

There have been times in my life when I find that a book and I have called out to one another from the ether. This has only happened twice.

Squatted in malasana, I grabbed Terry's erosion and opened on a random page. It was the beginning of the piece about the abolishment of Roe vs. Wade and within three sentences I was crying on the floor of the small bookstore. I put the book back on the shelf, got up from the floor and walked away.

Unbeknownst to me, my then-boyfriend had been watching the scene unfold and went back the next day to purchase it. A poet, he handed me the book and said simply, “You need this." I did.

Once again, the ether and I were in line and the library's mail was a brown package labeled to my attention. Inside was an advanced reader copy of Terry's new book, the Glorians. This time, the voice of the wind was the one telling me that I "needed this”. I did.

Per usual, Terry give so much for one to sit with; digest slowly and reflect with the whole of one's spirit.it speaks to my soul in words that I lack to adequately express as well as Terry does.

Earth is asking us to wake up and reflect on the implications that our conscious and unconscious actions are having on the integrity of life in all manifestations, large and small.

Each species - large or small; feathered, furred, or finned - carries the larger story of planetary health in its cells. The difference between our species and other species is that we are responsible for the demise of all the others.

Terry offers questions that require us to Stop. Sit. Be. That require us to give time to turn ourselves inside out and be honest about how things truly are; how our individual actions and inactions are contributing to the problems that are destroying every single organism on this Planet that- literally- gives us our lives.

How much of your first world comfort are you willing to release?

How much convenience are you ready to give up to allow species other than humans to flourish, heal, and return the balance back to our irreplaceable living Planet?

Does one's spiritual orientation cease to exist as well when our place-based bearings are no longer reliable?

What is the world without any trees? The winter makes it harder to be content in the place I live when the land is nothing but brittle, crunchy brown. It looks like the color of illness. The barren landscape inspires nothing in me and I find I feel I am failing that I am unable to find the beauty of existing where I am. Can I accept that the world denies personhood to the very nature that creates us? That keeps us alive? Feeds us, humbles us and puts us in our proper place in the delicate balance of this Planet within the Universe?

I find it appropriate that this was the last book I read in the year of 2025. It came to me in a time of mental unrest and fitfulness.it spoke to me and feed me things that I have been missing in my life of late and fueled my journey into my mind, into my spirit; my soul, and gave me language to help guide me into making peace with my unrest. To be wiser and steadfast in my belief that our small actions of defiance; our individual refusals to comply to a system that we do not agree DO make a difference. That when you fall back in flow with the energy of the Universe that carries us all, things will come to you and remind you that you are not alone in your mindset and perspectives.

As Terry asks: "Who is listening? I want honest conversations that do not end on the obligatory hopeful note.”

I want honest conversations that do not end on the obligatory hopeful note.

"How well do you live with uncertainty?"

”What else is there?" I replied.

What else indeed, Terry. What else indeed . . .

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have devoured almost everything Terry Tempest Williams has written since I read Refuge in the early 90s. Terry’s ability to describe, connect, explain, question and create with words is extraordinary. I marvel at how she connects disparate ideas and helps me to look at the world in new ways.

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to slow down with this one. There really aren’t words to describe what I felt while reading The Glorians. Yes, this is a book you feel and absorb. It will stay with me.

Most important to me was the need to reclaim that part of myself that was gradually denied during my youth. The stories shared were an invitation to take on this challenge.

Thank you for a beautiful read!

Received a free copy in a Goodreads Giveaway.

[Brady Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terry Tempest Williams’ book “The Glorians” is an exceptional exploration into our fraught and complicated times. Much of her words in these stories revolve around loneliness, change, and transformation as well. Loneliness brought on from the pandemic, from the sixth extinction we’re bringing about with our human selfishness, and from our alienation from one another in this politically polarizing time. But like much of her previous work there is a refreshing undertone of hope as well, as showcased through her observations of Glorians (as she defines them in the book) and the Holy Ordinary. (Some may find the concept of Glorians and her spiritual musing more interesting than I did, so I’ll leave that up to the individual reader.)

She starts the book by quoting Emerson: “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” And therein lies the transformation we all seek out of the gloom of these times. If, indeed we can take action. So she had be hooked from the start.

I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend anyone feeling a lingering sense of unease to pick up a copy. Her observations and reflections have always rang true for me, and this book is no exception. Especially with passages like: “I am no longer surprised when the familiar becomes the unknown, the unexpected, the unrecognizable. … The world we are struggling to understand is moving faster than our comprehension. We need time. We need space. Change requires spaciousness if we are to integrate the past with the present with faith toward a future - this is not something to fear but face, honor, and embrace.”

Another theme in the book I enjoyed was her call to listen more. Acknowledging how what’s sacred to one may be blasphemy to another. I think about this a lot these days. How our curiosity seems to have lost all depth in this age of constant algorithmic fodder. How we get stuck in the cycle of our own beliefs and what we believe to be true without any further exploration. I think this is why so many feel stuck these days. I love when she writes halfway through the book: “What we know and what we don’t know is what leads us to our calling.” I couldn’t agree more!

Finally, thank you Terry for your continued work writing about the importance of preserving wild places for not only their own sake, but ours, the planet, and the biodiversity which enriches our lives, minds, and bodies. How lonely will this planet be with just us humans? How can one expect to find spiritual connections without nature? She asks: “Who will we become if our species and other known invasive species crowd out endemic ones, crushing the diversity of life and glorious specificity of beings living in vulnerable ecosystems? Are we consciously opting for a Wonder Bread world - a bland, prepackaged existence chosen deliberately or by default in the name of efficiency?”

Thank you Grove Atlantic for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

From 15bytes review: “Where Fear and Awe Join Hands”: The Glorians, by Terry Tempest Williams

Just a few chapters into the book I realized I was spending more time annotating and thinking about what I had read rather than actually reading words. I believe it’s a good thing. Thinking. Especially if you’re thinking about words written by Terry Tempest Williams.

“I hear my grandmother telling me to focus on the ‘golden thread’ that shows us the ‘through line’ that weaves the world back together. Where is this golden thread now?”

Words thread into sentences. Sentences weave into story. Story builds understanding. Understanding creates action. Action promotes change. Change is essential.

With her latest book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, Williams is persistent in her commitment to showing how essential changes can come from our attention, as stewards of the Earth, to the small things. These small things are ethereal. They are soft as a feather, hard as stone. They are, perhaps, in broad definition, everything, if given the right, if given the grace, to coexist in our plane of being.

What is a Glorian?

Williams has made a pledge that came to her in a dream: “Your vow is to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians.” Throughout the book, which chronicles, roughly, her experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, she attempts to document and also define what a Glorian is. Ultimately, the truth is simple. Glorians are “the holy ordinary.”

“The ant carrying the coyote blossom across the desert is a Glorian.”

Williams moves between worlds: her desert home in Castle Valley and Harvard Divinity School where she is writer-in-residence. These two worlds inform and shape the book. At home, where during the pandemic she has sheltered and maintained distance from the outer world, it is a time of sacred suspension, an opportunity to dwell wholly in the interiority of place. When in-person learning resumes as the pandemic ebbs, she is reluctant to leave her home but is drawn to the academic stimuluses of the campus.

“It was hard to leave the desert…How to clean myself up for Cambridge? …I will arrive as a tumbleweed with tanned appendages and callouses so thick on the soles of my feet, I don’t need shoes. Reluctantly, I pull on my black cowboy boots, black pants, and a black sweater and leave Utah.”

Williams has many loves on campus with her colleagues and the students who all mix in the realm of higher learning. One particular love, however, is nonhuman. A two-centuries old red oak tree in the Commons of the Divinity School.

“Some people hug trees. I talked to this one. Every day, I would sit with the tree and a book, or with binoculars in hand when I watched birds and ate my sandwich.”

The “Divinity Tree” becomes a symbol of our earth in microcosm, a precarious focal point as the tree’s future becomes uncertain with a proposed building renovation. Supporters argue for it to be spared from the development, that it be allowed to live not only for its historic role—Emerson may have enjoyed the shade of its canopy—but also for its own terms as a sentient being that brings humans and all manner of creatures together as a community:

“…blue jays, cardinals, black-capped chickadees and titmice; house finches, flickers, downy and hairy woodpeckers, creepers and nuthatches also present, moving up and down the trunk. A pair of Cooper hawks nest in the Divinity Tree; sometimes, a red-tailed hawk perches on outer branches looking for prey, most likely cottontails running across the lawn; and dozens of gray squirrels, amusing to watch, run up and down and across the intricate network of branches, large and small. One night, when working late, I open my window and listened to a screech owl.”

The Divinity Tree is just one part of Williams’ earth, our Earth, that is exposed to demise, to extinction. Throughout the book vulnerable locations abound, but Williams primarily focuses on Utah, her home—Great Salt Lake, the La Sal Mountain range, the ever-changing arroyos and floodplains of her treasured Castle Valley. Williams lovingly appeals to the reader that these places threatened by drought, by flood, by fire, are most defenseless against the incomparable ignorance of humans. We’re not listening. We’re not seeing. We’re not changing.

Williams states: “The only force I know that carries this much velocity and power within us to change is love, a fierce love that is a force field of action—like the one witnessed as a flashing of water in the desert in drought.”

And what of the Glorians? What of love?

I finished reading the book, closed it, and put it down, my sticky notes furling from between the pages like a strange flower, some petals crumpled, fading, others fresh, all like coyote blossoms held aloft by ants in the desert. Williams encourages the reader’s own documentation of encounters with the Glorians. It does not have to be epic. Though it most certainly will be if curated in the spirit of wonder. My own new and modest documentation manifests daily. And it is my responsibility to pay attention to and nurture the relationship with love. If not me, then who?

The Glorians of Terry Tempest Williams’ Epic Documentation begin with the river and all that dwell on its surface and beneath the current. In the sky above. It is the way of time. A felix culpa flourish on an anniversary tunic. The horizon. Black rainbows. A staple stitching a beloved’s heart back into being. Nymphs. Sage. A Glorian is a tree. They are all the trees, living and dead but still alive. Tadpoles and butterflies, horny toads and black widows, dewdrops, penumbras and the umbra. Bare as the syntax of a child. Extraordinary as breath. “The holy ordinary.”

“A Glorian meets you in amazement. A Glorian jolts you from an unconscious state of mind to a conscious place of mind. A Glorian is where fear and awe join hands.”

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This latest collections of musings from environmental writers Terry Tempest Williams contains an eclectic smattering of essays and vignettes that range from love and concern for a warning planet, memories of deceased family members and friends, racism, misogyny, endangered species, the importance of dreams, creativity through meditation, the tragedies of wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
She brings her bittersweet reflections back to her grandmother’s "gold thread" that weaves everything back together. "The Glorian is an encounter, a moment of grace, an élan vital."

The 2020-21 pandemic was a soul-bruising experience as well as a respite for Williams, who was writer-in-residence at Harvard School of Divinity when the Covid hit. (She does not have the kindest things to say about Harvard in general, asserting that it trains people less to teach and serve and more to control and dominate. "I have also experienced the spiraling descent of dark power at Harvard, how it is a formidable corporation . . . as powerful and self serving as any institution in America. . . . Everyone at Harvard is afraid”).

As she was sent home from Massachusetts in March 2020 to self-isolate with her husband in their native small town in Grand County, Utah (near Arches National Park), she suffered a crisis of fear and regrets, each tinged with hope and epiphanies. In a letter sent to her scattered students, she noted ,"This is a time to reflect, soar, walk, read, ponder . . . . our task is to pay attention, listen; finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find. . . . . writing ourselves alive." She urged the young people to serve and create relating to the moment, solace to the healers and those being healed; to create healing online meditations . . . the “documentation of the glorians.”

Upon her return to Harvard, she fears "America has long Covid. It’s hard to get our bearings. Our institutions are failing us . . . structural racism is exposed, misogyny, our health care system is now seen as a house of cards. Politicians worry more about the well-being of their party than that of their constituents." She sadly observes, then describes at length the condemnation and destruction of Harvard's venerable “divinity tree,” deeply regretting the lack of respect for this sacred campus relic. (But the tree has a somewhat happy ending, which I will not reveal).

"Let the Glorians come near, so that we may come to know them. We shall observe the Glorians with our eyes and not only see them, but see ourselves not as wicked, but wonder-filled. Our punishment is in the distances we keep. If we say the Glorians are our refuge and we make our dwelling place as one with them and for them. For the Glorians do not demand or command anything of us, but only choose to lure us closer to life, away from what distracts us and harms them."

[Ray Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Glorians
The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary
Terry Tempest Williams
Grove Atlantic
https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-gl...

This review previouslyappeared on Substack: https://rayzimmerman.substack.com/p/g...

Terry Tempest Williams is well known among literary naturalists, particularly for her titles, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, When Women Were Birds, Ersoion, and The Open Space of Democracy. Her books are stories of human struggles and encounters with the divine, particularly through relationships with the natural world.

This most recent nonfiction collection begins in 2020 with the arrival of COVID-19 and her hurried departure from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she serves as Writer in Residence at the Harvard Divinity School. Harvard had moved classes online mid-semester and sent everyone home.

The stories continue, from her home in Utah to her return to Cambridge, and with further travels between the two. She addresses the difficulties of living in two places over a period of years.

In a dream, Williams is challenged to fulfill a promise to write “The Epic Documentation of the Glorians,” but what is a Glorian? In the introduction, Williams gives one answer.

A Glorian is an encounter.
A Glorian is a meeting with elan vital.
A glorian is a moment of grace.
The Glorians she encounters are both humans and visitors from the more-than-human world. One is a bear cub fleeing a fire. A coyote makes an appearance, and Williams makes an anigmatic reference to the Coyote Clan. This reference will be familiar to readers of her past books. Buffalo (American Bison) play a significant role.

The “Divinity Oak,” a venerable and beloved dweller on the Harvard Campus, is central to the story. The oak was already there when Ralph Waldo Emerson visited the campus. It must be cut for a new project to proceed, and this proposal results in protests, letters, and pronouncements.

The humans she encounters include the nature writer Barry Lopez, a lifelong friend, and Bell Hooks, whom she meets only through a brief message. Those encounters have a sense of homage, particularly in her description of Georgia O'Keeffe's series of paintings of the Sacred Datura.

I have read this book, and I reread sections from time to time. Despite the turmoil addressed, I find great comfort in this book.

[Abil Khayr · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Glorians: Visitations From the Holy Ordinary
By Terry Tempest Williams
Review by Abi’l Khayr

There are flashes of brilliance in this newest work from Terry Tempest Williams, and finely woven descriptions of events that brought me to tears with their beauty. As a memoir focused on episodes from her life in the time just before, during, and now after the Covid pandemic, she offers marvelous examples of staying connected to the ordinary happenings of life and of nature as we move through our lives.

The Holy Ordinary.

Taken as a whole, perhaps with a bit of reading between the lines, one can sense a profound teaching coming through. That by attending to the ordinary, by being present to whatever it is that is happening in our daily existence, in our own back yard you might say, by staying present and noticing, that we will find ourselves swept into the rhythm of the natural world. And from inside that rhythm we will feel connected, we will feel the holiness of ordinary events.

Her lyrical description of witnessing, along with her husband, dozens of North American right whales breaching off the coast of Cape Cod might awaken a sense of alarm when one understands that these are a critically endangered species.

Her harrowing remarks about the flash floods in the canyon near her home in Utah could nudge one toward learning what we can as individuals do to protect and nurture the planet we call home.
But these are not the main focus of the book. Rather, I found in these pages a series of occurrences, some involving friends and mentors, one involving a black widow spider, that recount episodes in a life being lived with purpose and attention. A holy ordinary life.

I will say the title of the book, The Glorians, had troubled me. It seemed to be an unnecessary barrier to hearing what the book is saying, a new and unfamiliar word to get in my way. Why not just stick with the holy ordinary and present the book as a memoir presenting a series of holy ordinary moments from the author’s experience?

Apparently the term came to Williams as part of a dream. She illustrates the meaning by describing her observation of a solitary ant carrying a coyote blossom back to its colony, noticing that each time there was an obstacle to overcome that two or three other ants would suddenly appear to help the carrier past whatever the hindrance. “The ant carrying the coyote blossom across the desert is a Glorian. A Glorian is an encounter. A Glorian is a meeting with elan vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace.”

“If we dared to look more deeply at what our dreams hold and can inspire, would we live more fully in the presence of all that binds us together as human beings?," Williams asks. "Might we become more open to seeing the visitations of the Holy Ordinary as moments of encountering, even inhabiting grace? And could this contribute to our return to a collective embrace of beauty that unites our hearts rather than divides them?”

In the end I worried less about the unfamiliar title, and appreciated more being moved to laughter and to tears, feeling perhaps a few steps closer to the deep beauty that is life.

#theglorians

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I first encountered Terry Tempest Williams through her book Refuge, which I read immediately after its 1991 release. Refuge remains one of my very favorite books primarily because of the impact it made on my ability to see more broadly, to challenge conventional viewpoints, and to love the southwest more deeply. Since then, I've tried to read everything that this author has written because every time I do, her writing stirs me to greater contemplation, understanding, and pointed action. Her works are not light or frivolous. And that is true of this latest body of work, written before, during, and installed after the COVID pandemic, when the stakes seem even more urgent.This collection of interconnected essays tries to motivate the reader in the desperate context of our burning climate and our unraveling national identity. It is incredibly timely for providing the hope and the resolve needed to recognize how intertwined we are with all species and to continue to fight even in the midst of loss and grief. Some essays are short and stand on their own, like her musings about horny toads and Monarch butterflies. Others, like about the cutting down of the Harvard Divinity School Tree, form a thread repeated throughout the book to help us to think deeply about what links us even if we have different experiences or different responses to shared experiences. As she says when concluding the book, the author's job is not to just pass along knowledge but to guide us to think our own thoughts and to express them creatively, to try new ideas and see what insights flow out, and to find our own unique ways to move forward in pursuit of our shared goals to preserve what we value and hold dear. May we listen to and honor the holy in the ordinary wherever we find it.