A little over four and a half years ago my family moved from Payson City in Utah County to a new home at the desert’s edge in San Juan County, Utah. Living on the Colorado Plateau has been something of a dream come true. Besides reintroducing me to a more natural (for me) environment, living here helps me cope with the pressures of caring for a high maintenance, special needs child. Even on days when I can’t leave the yard I can walk out on the rickety second-story porch and see the trunk of a rainbow standing only a few hundred feet away or take in the silky ripple of cloud shadow and sunshine across the pinyon-juniper forest stretching miles to the south. Thunderstorms in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and southeast Utah ring and electrify our kiva-roof sky. At night, a very good view of the Milky Way’s spiraling embrace and the ceaseless anthesis and waning of moonlight keep imagination astir nearly until the moment I fall asleep. Continue reading “What’s really wild”
Tag: Finding Beauty in a Broken World
Summer reading
I’m getting ready to crack the spine on Terry Tempest Williams’ latest book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. Over a year ago, I heard her read a little from the pre-publication draft and attended a workshop she conducted. It was apparent to me that she had changed her approach to her audience somewhat as well as to people she does not expect to be in her audience but are part of her expressed concern with the stances human beings take in or against nature.
If anybody would like to join me in reading this book, we could discuss it here on WIZ as we go along. If nobody else wishes to read with me, then I’ll put up a review, probably in August. It takes me a while to get through a book because I take copious notes but I’ll try to keep up a reasonable pace.
Also, if anybody has reading suggestions for nature-themed fiction, non-fiction nature writing (ex. Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods), or literary science or nature writing, including nature-themed poetry, Mormon or un-, please list them in the comments.
If you would like to read my Field Notes from Williams’ writing workshop, go here.
Wilderness Interface Zone 