Rapture, Grief, Beauty: Terry Tempest Williams introducing Erosion

Vijaya Nagarajan, Terry Tempest Williams

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“Terry Tempest Williams is our great activist laureate. Working out of the lineage of Dickinson, O’Keeffe, D. H. Lawrence, and, later, Abbey and Peacock, she is nonetheless singular and extraordinarily original. She is rooted as juniper yet ephemeral as a sand dune. The forces that have eroded her are rapture and grief. What remains is elemental beauty.”—Rick Bass, author of For a Little While

Terry Tempest Williams is a naturalist, an activist, and an introspective presence whose every word is authentic. Her new book, Erosion, explores the concept of erosion and its opposite, becoming, in the context of land, self, belief, and fear. She looks at the current state of American politics, implications of choices to gut wilderness and sacred lands, endangered species, drought, extraction, and contamination — along with transcendent moments of relief and refuge, solace and spirituality. Rebecca Solnit wrote of Erosion, “Terry Tempest Williams’s voice in the clamor is like a hot desert wind blowing away the litter in a crowded room and leaving behind only what has weight, what is essential. These are essays about the courage to face what is most brutal and monstrous, by finding what is most beautiful and merciful.”