An Unspoken Hunger

My review of a book by Terry Tempest Williams

This is a photo of my well-read copy of the book.

Williams presents great stories, well told. She reveals her love of the natural world and the people she holds in her heart.

Her essay, “Mardy Murie, an Intimate Profile,” presents a verbal portrait of a mentor. William’s love for Mardy is much like the love for her mother and grandmother, revealed in her earlier book, Refuge.

Murie was born in 1902 and lived until 2003. She married the field biologist Olaus Murie and raised a family on the move as he pursued research projects in Alaska and Wyoming.

She built tables and chairs on the spot and prepared meals in the wild. She became a mentor to younger conservationists at the Teton Science School. She testified at public hearings for conservation and embodied a spirit much like that of Tempest herself.

Another essay is an homage to Georgia O’Keefe titled “Consorting with Coyote,’ and yet another is a ‘Eulogy for Edward Abbey.” The trickster figure is a strong image in these two essays and Coyote is a recurring symbol for Williams. Her book Coyote’s Canyon reveals more aspects of this totemic animal.

Along with these well-known figures, she reveals family members. There is an uncle who never lived independently and appears to her in a dream after his death. Another uncle, a former State Senator, joins her and his daughter in a protest opposing nuclear testing. His wife has undergone treatment for breast cancer, a disease of epic proportions in Tempest’s clan. They are a family of downwinders, a name for those who survived radiation from the Nevada nuclear bomb tests.

Aside from these human characters, the reader will encounter mystic beings. She includes women who dance with beas and a slain bear who becomes a woman. There is Artemis for whom the bear is a sacred symbol, and who, according to some myths, turned Callisto into a bear.

Stone Creek Woman, a personification of the land itself, is the most compelling of these characters. She is a rock figure that emerges from a waterfall to speak to those willing to listen. She is a guardian of the Grand Canyon.

The myths revealed in this book are stories with a deeper truth. Stories to live by.