Customer Reviews

Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

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When Terry Tempest Williams starts this book with her simple equation place + people = politics, you know you've started reading a book meant to have political impact. But as the equation states, and as any TTW reader knows, you will be reading about place and about people, and you will be reading about these things as seen through the honest open heart of Terry Tempest Williams.

Red is a collection of stories, poems, journal entries and thoughts centered in one place, the redrock desert of southern Utah. While reading Red I found myself feeling similarities with it and Steinbeck's The Long Valley and The Pastures of Heaven. Like both of those books, Red tells the different stories of separate people and the one place that connects them. But unlike those books, the stories in Red span hundreds of years. The place remains relatively unchanged through time. But the people and civilizations pass through this unchanging landscape living, making their mark on the land, and dying. TTW tells these stories in geologic time-desert time. The people stay connected.

Hands connect the people. Hands appear everywhere in the book. Hands are the link between past, present and future. Hands come from the past in geologic forms with Anasazi handprints on clay pots and redrock walls, and a sharp obsidian chip "worked by ancient hands". They are in the present in biologic forms with a hand sliced open by the same sharp obsidian chip; one hand on the belly of a petroglyph while the other rests on a human belly in the present; and the story of children holding out hands to catch the desert's tears that drip from ferns. Then in the final paragraph hands are formed in prayer: "The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint....Wild mercy is in our hands."

I enjoy reading Terry Tempest Williams. Her writing seems to always reach out and touch me. She's done it again, and this time with Red hands.

Terry Tempest Williams is without a doubt one of the finest writers to tackle the intricacies of the American West in literature of any sort. Carrying her own torch is impressive enough, but Williams also evokes the activism and urgent motivation that calls us to appreciate, respect and save our remaining western wilderness that was so powerfully put into words by Edward Abbey. I have reviewed a portion of "Red" before (see "Desert Quartet"), so I will limit this review to the remainder of "Red".

Williams carries on the great and ancient tradition of storytelling to raise consciousness about uniquely Western, and specifically Colorado Plateau, issues. From the Hopi and Navajo peoples, down through the early American explorers, the proverbial cowboys and the present activist community, storytelling has been a central method of encapsulating emotion, opinion and experience into messages that have wide appeal. Williams, in stories such as "Coyote's Canyon" here in "Red", presents her powerful vision of an environmental movement wrapped in the spiritual connection with the stark, often harsh, always awe inspiring desert and given wings by action. Like Abbey, Williams does not shy away from controversy, and her opening to the title essay is a list of places that strangely grows longer each time I contemplate the names set forth. Williams gets personal here, and the blunt approach of listing over a hundred places brings to my mind the fact that I have walked on much of that ground... and that I have seen the critical need to protect these remaining places from the industrious uses and agricultural manipulation that has occured on the infinitely vaster balance of the Colorado Plateau. In this way, "Red" has demonstrated its effectiveness. Some may say that as a resident of California I might have no reason to comment on Utah... and I would, as Williams exhorts in "Red", flatly disagree. Every one of us has a responsibility to work toward a better world, and Williams manages to say this without preaching it or patronizing the reader. (Besides, my mother lives in southern Utah, and I have walked hundreds of miles of that beautiful land...).

In summary, "Red" is another jewel of a book from Terry Tempest Williams. I am glad to see "Desert Quartet" back in print, though I sorely miss Mary Frank's wonderful illustrations that were in the original. This is a book which is not a difficult read, nor a scholarly treatise... rather, it is a frank, realistic look at a serious challenge facing the United States right now.

Both a piece of literary artistry and passionate activism, "Red"'s audience appeal is the broadest of any book I've ever read. The book's structure, both wild and bounded by cadences of space, conforms strategically to Ms. Williams' conceptual take on the color red - red represents heat, anger, unpredictability, the lifeblood of the earth that runs through human beings and all earth's creatures, and is concentrated in the searing deserts of the American West where Ms. Williams lives. A thematic tapestry though it is, it is, at its core, a living breathing message presented selflessly and succinctly by a woman who I believe understands the need for a lifelong journey down the parallel rails of human and non-human nature until these rails converge. I recommend this book highly.

This book made me feel very guilty that I am not out there taking a stand on conservation, supporting a cause, or putting my land into a conservation easement. Her passion as well as commonsense about wild areas is contagious! She clearly defines the political and social situations surrounding land use through a variety of short stories ranging from disagreements within her family to lyrical myth. Even though Red is about the Southwest US, it is about land use everywhere. As with all Williams's books, the writing is marvelous.
This should be required reading for everyone who deals with land use (yes, developers included), is passionate about conservation regardless of what part of the world they live in, and all who recognize the need for wild places to sooth our souls and give us some perspective on life.

Terry Tempest Williams created this book to fight for Wilderness with the best tool she has, her writing. The beauty of her words hang in the air and cut like a knife. When asked by a friend why she writes, Williams responds: "I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating - always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. ...I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness."

What stream of conscience was supposed to be, but her writing is insightful, inspired and indeed worth rereading. Thanks, Terry.

Terry Tempest Williams' book, Red, is a book about life in the red-rock deserts of Utah, and what it means to belong to a place. But not just any place. Williams finds her heartbeat and lifeblood in red stone, her imagination in the scarcity of water, and her voice in the wind. Williams' lyrical non-fiction is infused with love and passion for the arid landscape that is her home. For those who don't know the area, Williams' writing will plant the seed of a different conception of earth's beauty, and for those who do know slickrock Utah, Williams' words and imagery feels as familiar as an old pair of hiking boots.

Red is, at its core, a defense of wilderness, and a clamoring for conservation before it is too late. Like the desert itself, William's writing is not always hospitable to those who would embrace it. Red challenges the conceptions of many of Williams' fellow Utah natives. In her own words, Williams wishes her writing to "begin a dialogue." Although Williams embraces the solitude and special silence of the desert, she recognizes that conversation is needed to spur change in the way that we think about land, ecosystems, and consumption of resources.

Williams' strength of voice and passion makes Red an important, and timely piece of environmentalist literature which captures a longing for a slower, more thoughtful way of life. In our age of rampant consumerism, selfishness, and high-speed everything, Williams' writing provides badly needed room to breathe in her ode to the open spaces of the wilderness.