voices from the forest Photo © Cheryl Himmelstein / coyoteclan.com
T
erry Tempest Williams is an author, activist, and conservationist based in Southwest Utah. Known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, Mrs. Williams’
books include Leap, Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, Desert Quartet, and others. In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall
Terry Tempest Williams “
As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowledge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as a spiritual one.
Award from The Wilderness Society.
I believe we need wilderness in order to be more complete human beings, to not be fearful of the animals that we are, an animal who bows to the incomparable power of natural forces when standing on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, an animal who understands a sense of humility when watching a grizzly overturn a stump with its front paw to forage for grubs in the lodgepole pines of the northern Rockies, an animal who weeps over the sheer beauty of migrating cranes above the Bosque del Apache in November, an animal who is not afraid to cry with delight in the middle of a midnight swim in a phosphorescent tide, an animal who has not forgotten what it means to pray before the unfurled blossom of the sacred datura, remembering the source of all true visions. As we step over the threshold of the twenty-first century, let us acknowledge that the preservation of wilderness is not so much a political process as a spiritual one, that the language of law and science used so successfully to define and defend what wilderness has been in the past century must now be fully joined with the language of the heart to illuminate what these lands mean to the future. From “A Prayer for a Wild Millennium,” copyright © 2000 by Terry Tempest Williams. Appears in her book Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, published by Pantheon Books in 2001. Used by permission of Brandt and Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. Any copying or distribution of this text is expressly forbidden. All rights reserved.
”
Summer – Fall 2014
29