an evening with Terry Tempest Williams

Never limit your cultural explorations.

Last night I was given a great opportunity to share an evening with Terry Tempest Williams. I must begin by saying, I did not know virtually anything about her, but what ensued really took me away.

I was expecting a literary discussion, or a forum of scholars. And, though these too were present, the evening consisted of much more. Terry Tempest Williams is an amazing activist, and her discussion last night rode on those winds. She began her talk by referencing one of her closest friends-- Doug Peacock (Hayduke) who happens to be one of my favorite people in the world, and character hero. She regaled the audience with very moving words and stories, and re instated a zeal in myself that I have long forgotten. 

I absolutely must read her work, I felt embarrassed to be one in the crowd who never had.

She is has been called a "western Emerson or Thoreau" and from the brief illumination of her character- I couldn't agree more.

Growing up in New England I was infatuated with Thoreau, Civil Disobedience  and the like.
My parents essentially grew up In Concord Mass, and I would often Visit Thoreau's pond.

Now, to give a true anecdote about EEmerson and Thoreau, that hopefully will educate some of this very western class on very eastern minds, and will hopefully help describe to you my sense of Terry Tempest Williams....

In protest to a poll tax--whose money went to support the Mexican American War-- Henry Davidson Thoreau simply defied government rule, and refused to pay and support this unjust war.
Subsequently he ended up in jail.
His contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked him, "What are you doing in there, Henry?"
Thoreau simply responded, "Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.