CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change. Terry Tempest Williams More Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams More Quotes From Terry Tempest Williams The birds and I share a natural history. It is a matter of rootedness, of living inside a place for so long that the mind and imagination fuse. Terry Tempest Williams imagination bird long What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences. Terry Tempest Williams entering narrative attention The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world. Terry Tempest Williams diversity creativity making-love Abundance is a dance with reciprocity - what we can give, what we can share, and what we receive in the process. Terry Tempest Williams abundance share giving My heart breaks living in southern Utah on the edge of America's Redrock Wilderness, witnessing what the Bush Administration's policies regarding oil and gas exploitation are doing to our public lands that belong to all Americans. Their policy is not about the public or the public's best interest. It is about the oil and gas corporations' best interests. The Secretary of the Interior is urging the Bureau of Land Management to support the gas and oil industry's most extreme drilling scenario in some of the American West's most pristine and fragile areas without proper legal and public input. Terry Tempest Williams support southern heart Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community. Terry Tempest Williams community stories inspire Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored. Terry Tempest Williams ritual formulas harmony I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now:... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged. Terry Tempest Williams nature real thinking What every woman knows is that we are remade each time we make love, each time we give birth; each time we feel the blood making its way through our body into our cupped hands, we remember it is our destiny to make change. Terry Tempest Williams destiny hands blood The act of civil disobedience is the act of taking our anger and turning it into sacred rage. It is a personal and collective gesture of resistance and insistance. Terry Tempest Williams gestures sacred resistance I think Barack Obama has been a terrible disappointment environmentally. It's very sobering to realize, as a westerner, that under the Obama administration, we now have more active oil and gas leases on public lands than Americans ever did. Obama has been worse. Terry Tempest Williams realizing disappointment thinking Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace. Terry Tempest Williams wilderness silence grace When you look at the Pueblo communities along the Rio Grande, when you talk to the Navajo people, the Ute people, and certainly the native peoples of California who still have their communities intact, it is what they have always known: that we are not apart from nature but a part of it. Terry Tempest Williams california community people There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private. Terry Tempest Williams writing beautiful art There is something very sensual about a letter. The physical contact of pen to paper, the time set aside to focus thoughts, the folding of the paper into the envelope, licking it closed, addressing it, a chosen stamp, and then the release of the letter to the mailbox - are all acts of tenderness. Terry Tempest Williams focus sensual paper To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice. Terry Tempest Williams asks littles I speculate over some of the Anglo nomenclature of birds: Wilson's snipe, Forster's tern . . . : What natural images do these names conjure up in our minds? What integrity do we give back to the birds with our labels. Terry Tempest Williams names integrity giving No separation between the spiritual and the physical. It is all one. Terry Tempest Williams separation spiritual The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power Terry Tempest Williams vulnerable path heart Whatever artistry may occur within the manuscript, the magic happens for me in the last draft. Whatever I have been resistant to say must finally be said. In the end, I see where my pencil has been leading me. Terry Tempest Williams magic lasts may
