Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change.
Terry Tempest WilliamsIn the early days of the Mormon Church, stewardship toward the land was a priority. It was a matter of survival in the desert.
Terry Tempest WilliamsWhat other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
Terry Tempest WilliamsTortoise steps, slow steps, four steps like a tank with a tail dragging in the sand. Tortoise steps, land based, land locked, dusty like the desert tortoise herself, fenced in, a prisoner on her own reservation -- teaching us the slow art of revolutionary patience.
Terry Tempest WilliamsAnd so we polish our own lives, creating landscapes and canyons and peaks with the very silt we try to avoid, the dirt we disavow or hide or deny. It is the dirt of our livesโthe depressions, the losses, the inequities, the failing grades in trigonometry, the e-mails sent in fear or hate or haste, the ways in which we encounter people different from usโthat shape us, polish us to a heady sheen, make us in fact more beautiful, more elemental, more artful and lasting.
Terry Tempest Williams