Timely and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and
conservationist
In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent
essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on
America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open
space of democracy. She asks: How do we find the strength to not look
away from all that is breaking our hearts?
We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped
the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely
and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of
democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire
cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears
National Monument--sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American
Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the
relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama
in which oil rigs light up the horizon. And she testifies that the
climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought
outside her door and, at times, within herself.
These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward
through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new
territory--emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert
lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and
whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our
becoming.
Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once,
written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of
the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of
resistance, and that water can crack stone.
