Quotes from Terry Tempest Williams

It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presence. I want to be fully present wherever I am, alive to the pulse just beneath the skin.

On that same trip, my brother and I camped against a red rock wall and in the morning when we awoke, a boulder had fallen between us.

Evidently, selling off America's public lands is not only good for democracy, but good for the economy. It will pay the bills for building more roads and make up for the losses in the decline of timber sales. It will also help pay for the war in Iraq, a war predicted on lies. The outcry is faint. The streets are empty. We are comfortable here in the United States of America. We the people seem to be asleep, numb, and dead to the liberties being lost.

Our National Parks] are more than scenery, they are portals and thresholds of wonder, an open door that swings back and forth from our past to our future.

In this era where the war on terror is used as an excuse to exploit and plunder, and sell off our public lands, in this new world where the World Bank and World Trade Organization honor corporate rule over local enterprises, and where environmental issues are being usurped in the favor of more jobs and a robust economy, Where is the place for wilderness?

I must question everything, even if it means losing my faith, even if it means becoming a member of a border tribe among my own people. Tolerating blind obedience in the name of patriotism or religion ultimately takes our lives.

we need not lose hope, we just need to locate where it dwells.

I fear silence because it leads me to myself, a self I may not wish to confront. It asks that I listen. And in listening, I am taken to an unknown place. Silence leaves me alone in a place of feeling. It is not necessarily a place of comfort.

I keep turning around to feel the embrace of these sweeping valley. First thoughts: Never have I felt so safe. No development. No distractions. Nothing to break my heart. I was not prepared for this uninterrupted peace.

Experience opens us, creates a chasm in our heart, an expansion in our lungs, allowing us to pull in fresh air to all that was stagnant. We breathe deeply and remember fear for what it is - a resistance to the unknown.

It is through the process of defining what we want as a town that we are becoming a real community. It is through the act of participation that we change.

In the open space of democracy, beauty is not optional, but essential to our survival as a species.

What will we make of the life before us? How do we translate the gifts of solitary beauty into the action required for true participatory citizenship?

The erosion of democracy and decency feels like a widening crack on the face of liberty.

A crisis woke us up. A shared love of place opened a dialogue with neighbors. We asked for help. We found partners. We used our collective intelligence to formulate a plan. And then we had to search within ourselves to find what each of us had to give.

When one hungers for light it is only because one's knowledge of the dark is so deep.

In my private moments of despair, I am aware of the limits of my own imagination... imaginations shared invite collaboration and collaboration creates community. A life in association, not a life independent, is the democratic ideal. We participate in the vitality of the struggle.

Can you be inside and outside at the same time? I think this is where I live. I think this is where most women live. I know this is where writers live. Inside to write. Outside to glean.

We are all having to move beyond what is comfortable. Patience is stretched. Personalities get in the way. Egos provide points of obstruction. It is never easy. We are learning to listen. We are learning to forgive. We are learning to go forward, believing what binds us together as a community is stronger than individual bickering points. And we are having a great time.

By honoring wilderness, we honor beauty. Beauty is not peripheral but at the core of what sustains us.

We trust - and trust is imperative - that we can create an economically viable and ecologically sustainable plan for the town, the land, and its creatures, alongside the interests of [a developer].

fears surface in my isolation. My serenity surfaces in my solitude.

Social change takes time. Communities are built on the practice of patience and imagination - the belief that we are here for the duration and will take care of our relations in times of both drought and abundance. These are the blood and flesh gestures of commitment.

Wilderness ensures possibilities. Saving wilderness is about saving ourselves, as well as protecting the evolutionary integrity of all other life forms on the planet.