The past decade has left the Utah author and environmental advocate Terry Tempest Williams split — between home and work, between the East Coast and her beloved West, between the wonders of nature and the distractions on her phone.
For the past nine years, Williams has shuttled between her home in Castle Valley, Utah, near Moab and her work as writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She’s also been on a quest to write “the epic documentation of the Glorians.”
That quest is the basis for Williams’ new book, “The Glorians: Visitations From the Holy Ordinary” (Grove Atlantic; 320 pages, hardcover; $28), in stores and online Tuesday.
Williams will mark the book’s release with a sunrise ceremony Tuesday, 6:30 a.m., at the Castle Valley Town Hall. She will begin a national book tour with an event on Thursday, 7 p.m., at the Salt Lake City downtown library, 210 E. 400 South. The event will be moderated by bookseller Ken Sanders.
“The Glorians” is in part a memoir through recent events, from the COVID-19 pandemic to now. It’s also a showcase for her observations about moments of beauty and awe, given the name “Glorians.”
A Glorian, Williams describes in the book, can be something as small as an ant carrying a coyote willow blossom across the dirt. Or it can be as big as a comet or the Great Salt Lake.
“I would say a Glorian is when we find ourselves in the presence of something larger than ourselves,” Williams said in a virtual interview this week from her Castle Valley home.
In this interview, edited for clarity and length, Williams talks about how she was set on the path of documenting Glorians, how they relate to what’s happening in the world, and how she navigated losing a prized teaching job at the University of Utah and unexpectedly landed at Harvard.
How did the concept of Glorians come to be?
It came from a dream. … March 20, 2020 — it was literally one week after lockdown, when the world shut down because of the pandemic. I had come home from teaching in Cambridge at the Harvard Divinity School. All I could think of was: How can I get home to [my husband] Brooke? How can I get home to Castle Valley and not die in a city? …
The dream I had is this: Walking through Harvard Yard in fall, it was resplendent red maples, bronze oaks. I knew I had to get to the tower. There is no tower. I walk toward the tower. I see two ways to get to the top: One direct staircase going up, the other a spiral staircase to the side. I choose the spiral, up and around.
When I get to the top of the tower, … I turn and I hear my name. I walk to where the name is being called from. There is a woman professor walking up the direct path stairway. My students followed behind her. The gate is locked. She says, “Terry, do you remember the vow you made to us?” And I said, “Remind me.” And she said, “Your vow is the epic documentation of the Glorians.” And I thought, “What is a Glorian?” And I was terrified that I was going to forget that vow again.
You spend a good deal of the book seeking the definition of a Glorian, and it’s elusive. How did the definition change as you were writing the book?
I had what I thought was a four-point definition that was clear, concise and smart. We writers think, “Oh, we figured this out. Here’s the definition.” … At the last minute of the last hour, I pulled it out of the book, and I think it was the right decision. I thought, “Who am I to say what a Glorian is? Who is anyone to say what the ineffable is?” What might be a Glorian for me will not be a Glorian for you. But I hope that along the way, there are enough clues or examples that people can say, “Oh, I remember when I saw this, and that was a Glorian.” … I would say a Glorian is when we find ourselves in the presence of something larger than ourselves.
When I was standing on the edge of [an] arroyo, as everything was crashing around me, … I was absolutely locked into that magnetism of a force I had never encountered before. [With] that wall of water, it was like staring into the face of God, and it was not human.
[When I saw] that ant carrying that coyote blossom, I lost track of all time and space. Luckily, in the pandemic, all we had was time and space here in the desert. … It’s a moment, it’s a conversation, it’s an encounter with the other that becomes one with, not one apart.
How did the documentation of the Glorians inform how you viewed real-world things over the last six years — the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, politics?
It’s about paying attention. It’s about not looking away, staying with the troubles.
We’re seeing this with Great Salt Lake. … Who could have ever imagined that Great Salt Lake would have an ally in Donald Trump? What do we do with that? If it’s all hands on deck, then those hands include Donald Trump. … If we see the Great Salt Lake as a Glorian, which I do, then the Glorians are inviting us to engage in a way we couldn’t have imagined that we can create a new way of being, a new way of seeing. …
In following the Glorians, [I’m] being mindful of where my attention is right now, at a time when we’re so distracted — whether it’s with news, or fake news, with our phones scrolling. … During the pandemic, the one thing we had was time, and how were we going to spend our time? [Are we] going to spend it in front of the television, being horrified every minute, and seeing what’s tearing our country apart? Or are we going to be able to look at that comet that was in the sky the same day [Congressman] John Lewis died? …
It’s about grounding ourselves so that we can really be present. … In those moments when we are present with another human being, with another species, with a moment in weather, seeing a night sky of stars, it is a grace note. So in a way, this is a book of gratitude.
There are parts of the book where you’re engaging with nature — like monarch butterflies, ladybugs or the snakes that sneak into your house — that’s alongside what we see on our phones, what we see in the world.
That’s the “holy ordinary.” These are not spectacular sightings. … I think there is a reciprocity among species. The philosopher Mary Midgley … said the ultimate act of anthropomorphism is to assume other species don’t feel. We’re not the only species that lives and loves and grieves on this planet. … Every day, I want to have eye contact with another species. It might be our cat. Just the other day, it was a Say’s phoebe (a bird).
You write about leaving your teaching post at the University of Utah in 2016. Looking back, how do you think your time at the U. and the way you left has sorted itself out for you?
[Note • Williams left the U. after a dispute with administrators over the Environmental Humanities program she co-founded. University officials said at the time they had safety concerns over her taking students out in the field. In her book, Williams writes that she later obtained evidence that state lawmakers pressured the U. to remove her because she and her husband bought oil and gas leases from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in an effort to prevent drilling on those parcels.]
2016 broke my heart. I was evicted from my tribe. My only ambition was to stay in Utah and teach among my own people, with students who would stay in Utah. I loved being at the University of Utah. I loved the Environmental Humanities program, and I loved the students. I made a decision that had consequences, and I can accept that. What I couldn’t accept was that [university officials] were not telling the truth. …
When I was offered a position for one year at the Harvard Divinity School, I said yes, because I realized I wanted to explore a more spiritual line of thinking. I wanted a more spiritual life. People said, “Wow. So that worked out.” Well, I didn’t feel that way. It took me away from home. It took me away from Brooke. It took me away from Castle Valley and my family. But what I can tell you now, 10 years later, is it was a gift to be away. …
I went back home and wrote to myself, “What do I know?” I know the names of birds. I know what it means to be on the shores of Great Salt Lake and smell brine. I know now what it means to see [the lake], not just in flood but in drought. … This is my last semester [at Harvard], and I’m so grateful to be back [in Utah]. This is where I belong. This is where my work is. This is where my family and community are. And I feel deeply humbled and deeply grateful to be here, now at this moment in time when, in community, I believe we really can make a difference and bring water back to Great Salt Like each in our own way with the gifts that are ours.
What did nine years at Harvard Divinity School teach you about your beliefs and spirituality?
How much I don’t know. How much I love the West. How foreign the East is. We speak different languages, but I came to love trees. … [I learned] to really live among the trees and not rely on a horizon. … I loved the intellectual rigor. That was inspiring to me. And I love being able to bring 20 Harvard Divinity School students to Great Salt Lake, and be mentored by locals. It changed those 20 students, and those students are going on and doing extraordinary things.
You’ve written in the past about your health, and the incidence of breast cancer among the women in your family. How are you now?
I just turned 70 [in September], and it feels like a miracle to me. I never imagined I would reach this age, because so many of the women in my family did not. So every day is a gift. I’ve always felt that. I’ve always been mindful not of the past or the future, but the present. … [I once asked my grandmother,] “What’s it like being old?” She said, “You lose things. … But other things take their place.”
“The Glorians” is a book [where] I have not held back. In other books, there have been metaphors or there have been structures in place. I think this is the most exposed I’ve been as a human being. I have talked about things I otherwise haven’t talked about. I just don’t think we can afford to hold back anymore. The world is too urgent, and we need to be honest with one another — and especially if we’re writers — of both the vitality of the struggle and what it really does mean to be human, at a time when we see so much inhumanity occurring.
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