Noticias

Terry Tempest Williams’ newest book came to her in a dream.

“The dream I had was this,” Tempest Williams recounted. “I was walking across Harvard Yard. It was fall, resplendent. Red maples, bronze oaks and vibrant yellow birch. I knew I had to get to the tower. There is no tower. I turn, I see the tower. I walk toward it, and I notice that there are two entry points. Up the direct staircase or to the side, a spiral staircase. I choose the spiral staircase. I go around, around, around. Once on top, I realize I’m standing in the ruins of Cassandra’s temple. I have the distinct feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I hear my name called. I turn, I walk toward it, there I see a woman walking up the direct path with students behind her. She’s a professor. The gate is locked. She says, ‘Terry, do you remember the vow you made to us?’ And I say, ‘Remind me.’ And she says, ‘Your vow is the epic documentation of the Glorians.’

“And then I wake up and I think, ‘What is a Glorian?'” she remembered. “And that’s really the genesis of the book.”

The dream took place on March 20, 2020 — the only dream, Tempest Williams says, that she can remember the exact date of. The United States had just gone into lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six years later, her book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, is out and is the Wilkinson Public Library’s One Book, One Canyon selection.

KOTO News spoke with Tempest Williams about the book, being present in a complicated world, and the joys and challenges of life in a small town.

Julia Caulfield (JC): Asking you to maybe put some words to something that isn’t fully describable. But when you look into the world and you are looking for Glorians, what does that mean? What is this kind of indescribable thing?

Terry Tempest Williams (TTW): Well, I think I did what anyone in this era would do. When I woke up that morning, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to go to Google. I’m going to Google ‘Glorian.'” I did. Nothing comes up. I go into the darkest recesses of the internet. Nothing comes up. And I let it go.

A year later, I realized I am haunted by this word. I’m hunted by this word. And I try it again, and I type in “Glorian.” Voila. This time it comes up on Urban Dictionary, and it reads: “Glorian, a hoarder of toilet paper.” And I think, this is not what I was looking for. And again, I just let it go.

And as so often is the case, in letting it go, I encountered a Glorian, and that happened to be an ant carrying a coyote blossom, magenta, the size of our index finger, across our patio.

I talk about following that Glorian, that wee little being. It was in that moment, as I watched it push, push, push, push that blossom all the way to its destination, which was its ant colony, after following it for 30 minutes. Watching it almost fall off the lip of our porch, helped by three attending ants who came up around, lifted it, and placed it back in its mandibles as it made its way onto the desert floor. Up ahead, I see this prickly pear patch. And I think it’s going to be impaled. Again, three attending ants appear, up and around each spine, each cactus, and it makes its way onto its colony, with again those attending ants vanishing. When it gets to the top, it lays its blossom down. Dozens and dozens and dozens of ants emerge, breaking down that blossom into the tiniest of pieces, disappearing into the heart of the colony, where I imagine this blossom is lining the pathway to the queen.

“Glorian,” I thought. “This is what a Glorian is.” A moment of grace: undeserved, unwarranted, unimagined, Élan vital. I think where it took me was this idea, Julia, that if we are present, we will know what to do.

I had a perfect definition, I have to tell you, four points of what a Glorian was. And then, as you suggested, I realized this is not something that can be defined.

Who am I to say what a Glorian is?

Who am I to say what God is?

Who are any of us to say?

All we can do is be present and be uplifted, be challenged, be carried away by a moment, a memory, an animal, a bird, another person, where our attention is fused. Time both stops and expands, and we are changed.

JC: I think you maybe just spoke to it a little bit, but how do you feel like we can gain more understanding of what is grand and holy and unknown through these experiences, these Glorian experiences that are small and ordinary and just really pull you into the present?

TTW: Well, I think that the key — you just mentioned — it’s the ordinary, the holy ordinary. It’s around us all the time. It’s being present to the world that we inhabit. I think as Westerners and Southwesterners, it’s around us every minute, if we will but look and pay attention.

I think about the valley in Telluride, just the magnificent peaks in the San Juans. I think about living in Castle Valley with Castleton Tower, that we know now through geologists — and Native people have always known — it has a pulse. The Colorado River in flood and in drought. Great Salt Lake.

We live and are humbled by the physical presences that surround us. I think at a time where everything is so uncertain, the Glorians remind us what endures. And to me, that’s the application. That’s the encounter that gives us buoyancy, that reminds us what endures.

JC: I think, and I imagine that this can happen everywhere. You say that Telluride and this little box canyon that we are in is a Glorian. I think it’s one of those things that when you live in a place, not that you forget or stop paying attention to the beauty and the wonder around you, but the hardness of real life — work, and in a place like Telluride, a huge influx of visitors, and the stress and the energy literally bouncing off the walls — can sometimes feel overwhelming and can sometimes maybe hinder our ability to tap into those, or to really be able to see them in our day-to-day lives.

So how do you encourage, how would you recommend that folks take those moments and find those places of presence and find those Glorians, even when sometimes, on the local level, the personal level, all the way up to the national, international level, things can feel so overwhelming?

TTW: I’m right there with you, and I certainly have no answers.

There is that shadow side to small communities. I know that in Castle Valley, we certainly know that in Grand County, in Moab, we are not anonymous.

You have to face your neighbor at the post office. You have a flash flood, and you have to go to your neighbor who has signs about MAGA and a billboard that says, “If you are not my friend, you are my target.” And there’s a huge American flag the size of a bedsheet hanging, waving in the wind, with a bullet hole through the target.

It’s not easy, but it’s real. It’s not abstract. And it’s worth it. It’s worth, I think, the struggle, the vitality of the struggle.

Living in Cambridge, I didn’t know anyone, and I was completely anonymous. I was not accountable to anyone. If I didn’t like a particular establishment, I could go elsewhere.

That’s not the case in Moab or in Telluride. We have to make peace with our neighbors. We have to be authentic and honest. We have to apologize. We have to be on hard boards. We have to disagree. It can be rough.

But on the other hand, when there’s that flash flood, I was knee-deep in muck with my Mormon neighbors and my MAGA neighbors, and it was very clear there was a lot more that bound us together than took us apart.

I think that’s really important to remember. Small communities, desert communities, mountain communities — we know each other. We have to look each other in the eye, and we keep shaking hands and begin again. Engagement. Something deeper than hope. We’re in this together.

JC: Do you have a practice of looking, specifically going out and looking for Glorians, or do you allow them to simply come to you as they do? And how does that maybe shift the lens through which you see the whole world?

TTW: I don’t go out looking for Glorians. You’ll never find them. I think it’s just living your life and paying attention, and something catches your eye.

Again, I’m repeating myself, but being present with where we are and paying attention.

I love what Simone Weil writes: “Attention is a prayer.”

How do we live more wholly — whole — and holy?

I think we are not only in a political crisis and an ecological crisis, but I think we’re in a spiritual crisis. What do we believe? What do we hold fast? What are we willing to stay with? To me, those are the questions that live in my heart.

And in those moments, all of a sudden, you see more clearly and you think, “Oh, this is a Glorian.” I think each of us, in our own way, with the gifts that are ours, can make a difference. Again, I go back to our own home ground: Telluride. Castle Valley. Colorado. Utah. I don’t know what to do nationally, but I do know what to do locally. And to me, this is the radius of care.

Terry Tempest Williams spoke with KOTO News to discuss her new book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

Tempest Williams will be in Telluride for a book talk as part of the Wilkinson Public Library’s One Book, One Canyon program.

The talk will take place at the library on Thursday, July 16, at 5:30 p.m.