About
In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams’s fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America’s public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: “How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?”These essays are Terry Tempest Williams’s call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory―emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.
Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.
The discussion will be led by Nan Seymour, founder of River Writing and past poet-in-residence on Antelope Island, where Nan led day-and-night vigils on behalf of the imperiled Great Salt Lake throughout the 2022 and 2023 Utah State legislative sessions. The discussion will focus the conversation on several essays in particular:
- The Council of Pronghorn
- What Love Looks Like: Erosion of Safety
- Heart of the Matter: Erosion of Fear
- Dwelling
Nan created River Writing in order to foster voice and authentic connection. Everyone is welcome in her circles. This community-held writing practice was designed for anyone willing to pick up a pen. A recent PBS documentary highlights River Writing as a method of repair for what is broken in our relationship with the natural world.
Her debut poetry collection, prayers not meant for heaven, was published by Toad Hall Editions in the summer of 2021. Nan’s story lake woman leaving, a modern myth, was awarded the 2022 Alfred Lambourne prize by Friends of Great Salt Lake.
As the poet-in-residence on Antelope Island, Nan led day-and-night vigils on behalf of the imperiled Great Salt Lake throughout the 2022 and 2023 Utah State legislative sessions. During her weeks on the receding lake shore, she assembled the praise poem called irreplaceable, a collective love letter containing over 400 individual voices from lake-facing citizens. The epic ode is a community cry for this essential ecosystem’s full restoration. In the May 2023 special issue of Desert Report, Nan offers a reflection on our relationship with the lake from the perspective of two winter vigils.
Nan continues to advocate for Rights of Nature, legally defensible personal rights for ecosystems, including Great Salt Lake. Her work gives voice to their inherent right to live, flourish, and evolve in a natural way. The words emerge from a devotion to repairing the breach between humans and the rest of the sentient, singing earth.
