Author TTW
Gave a talk at the college
Grace personified

Terry Tempest Williams was here in Durango this weekend at a Climate Change Summit.  I sat up front and was able to grab a cell phone photo of her immediately after her talk.  At the end of the day, I showed the photo to her husband.  He liked it and I emailed it to him.

She ended her talk with a quote from her 2020 essay “A Burning Testament” about the wildfires out west:

“Grief is love. How can we hold this grief without holding each other? To bear witness to this moment of undoing is to find the strength and spiritual will to meet the dark and smoldering landscapes where we live. We can cry. Our tears will fall like rain in the desert and wash off our skins of ash so our pores can breathe, so our bodies can breathe back the lives that we have taken for granted.

I will mark my heart with an “X” made of ash that says, the power to restore life resides here. The future of our species will be decided here. Not by facts but by love and loss.”

Hand on my heart, I pledge of allegiance to the only home I will ever know.