In her new book, Terry Tempest Williams explores our national parks, from the somber beauty of Gettysburg in PENNSYLVANIA to the isolated drama of Big Bend in Texas. The writer and environmentalist reads from “The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks’’ at 7 p.m. Thursday at Harvard Book Store.
BOOKS: What are you reading currently?
WILLIAMS: The book I’m so excited about now is “The Battle for Home’’ by Marwa al-Sabouni, a young Syrian architect who has chosen to stay in her country. It is her act of resistance. Her vision is that we have to continue the quest for beauty.
BOOKS: Is that typical of what you read?
WILLIAMS: This is what is on my nightstand: James Galvin’s “Everything We Always Knew Was True’’ and Claire-Louise Bennett’s novel “Pond’’ for her experimental prose. Last night, a friend at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City handed me “Grief is the Thing with Feathers,’’ a novel by Max Porter.
BOOKS: Which books influenced you as an environmentalist?
WILLIAMS: Certainly Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.’’ I remember when my grandmother was reading it in 1962. I was in second grade. She put it down and said to me, “Let’s go fill the bird feeders.’’ This was in Salt Lake City. She said, “Can you imagine a world without bird songs?’’ That was a transformative moment for me as a child because I couldn’t. When I was five she’d given me the Peterson Field Guide to western birds. Birds were family to me.
BOOKS: Do you own a lot of field guides?
WILLIAMS: It’s how I met my husband. I worked in Sam Weller’s Bookstore, one of the great bookstores in the West. This wild looking man came in with this beautiful woman. He bought all my favorite books. As I was ringing him up he told the woman that it was his dream to own all the Peterson field guides. She said, “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’’ I looked up and said, “I already have them.’’ We were married six months later.
BOOKS: Do you own a lot of art books?
WILLIAMS: I love art books as a reminder of a different way of perceiving the world. Art and music are my guides as a writer. Lately, I’ve been moved by “Genesis’’ by the photographer Sebastião Salgado. I’ve also been pouring over the images and prose of the artist Agnes Martin because of what she knows about the desert and simplicity.
BOOKS: Which books really capture the ethos of the West in your opinion?
WILLIAMS: “A Good Journey’’ by Simon J. Ortiz, a poet who is an Acoma Pueblo Indian. It speaks to the displacement, the violence, and the grace of the West. I love Wallace Stegner. I love “Recapitulation,’’ his book about Salt Lake City. The writers that influenced me early on were N. Scott Momaday, who wrote “The Way to Rainy Mountain,’’ and Leslie Marmon Silko, who wrote “Ceremony.’’
BOOKS: What is the hardest book you’ve ever read?
WILLIAMS: No question, “Steps to an Ecology of Mind’’ by Gregory Bateson, which is about the connections between all life. It’s a deeply interdisciplinary book, and it’s incredibly rigorous. “Woman and Nature’’ by Susan Griffin is a rigorous book I read early on. It challenged everything I was raised with as a Mormon girl, especially that a woman’s place was in the home.
BOOKS: What did you read for your book that you would recommend?
WILLIAMS: I loved the writings of Cesar Chavez, especially his speeches. I loved reading Whitman about Gettysburg and Chuck Bowden’s “Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing.’’
BOOKS: What is the one book you would give our next president?
WILLIAMS: Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.’’ It contains the soul of America in every line. We can’t forget beauty and reflection and the land itself.
AMY SUTHERLAND
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