Rootedness and refuge: two things we look for, two things Terry Tempest Williams has found and writes about eloquently as she weaves together her love for Utah's Great Salt Lake, her family, her religious heritage and birds. But what makes the book even more moving and profound is her experience of loss of those very roots and refuge through changes beyond her control.
Ms. Williams believes there is a very real connection between what happens to the land and what happens to her family, particularly the women in her family. As she observes the rising water level of the Great Salt Lake create disaster for the Bird Refuge on its shore, she observes the effect of cancer on her mother and family.
At one point Ms. Williams quotes a friend of hers, the Kenyan environmentalist Wengari Waigwa-Stone: “My people believe if you are close to the earth, you are close to people…what an African woman nurtures in the soil will eventually feed her family. Likewise, what she nurtures in her relations will ultimately nurture her community. It is a matter of living the circle.” (p. 137). Although this theme takes place throughout the book, it is with the epilogue that it becomes starkly true. For there, in the only chapter not named for a bird but rather “The Clan of the One Breasted Women”, Ms. Williams and we discover that the death of so many women in her family is probably the result of nuclear testing done in Utah during her youth. There is, once again, a connection between the land and the people.
It is Ms. Williams ability to sit, listen, observe, and reflect upon what she sees that makes her writing so wonderful. Perhaps this comes from her many years of bird watching. Perhaps it comes from sitting with parents, grandparents and great grandparents who are wise, loving story tellers deeply attached to both the land and family. Her descriptions of life, from the minute to the transcendent, are exquisite:
“A trip to the hospital is always a descent into the macabre. I have never trusted a place with shiny floors.” (p. 26)
“Egret plumes like French lace billow in the breeze and underscore their amorous play. One egret rises, the other follows. Their steps are light and buoyant…The two egrets stagger their leaps - one lifts, one lands, one lifts, one lands - and the dance continues.” (p. 49)
“Death is no longer what I imagined it to be. Death is earthy like birth, like sex, full of smells and sounds and bodily fluids. It is a confluence of evanescence and flesh.” (p. 219)
Ms. Williams introduced me to a land and a religion with which I was completely unfamiliar and she is intimately connected. The dramatically lively and diverse land of Utah is far from the dead barrenness I imagined. As a 4th generation member of The Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, she shows aspects of the tradition an outsider normally doesn't see. The result is a newfound appreciation for both.
The word religion means to reconnect. Ms. Williams, by writing about life, death, land, family, and faith has done so beautifully. This book can be used in any course interested in literature and the land, ecology, religion, women or life. I highly recommend it.
Review ©2004 by Jane Rechtman and RSiSS
The Masters School