Terry Tempest Williams and our New Book: Patagonia Tools for Grassroots Activists

For over twenty years, Patagonia has organized a Tools Conference, where experts provide practical training to help make activists more effective. Now Patagonia has captured Tools’ best wisdom and advice into a book, Patagonia Tools for Grassroots Activists: Best Practices for Success in the Environmental Movement, creating a resource for any organization hoping to hone core skills like campaign and communication strategy, grassroots organizing, and lobbying as well as working with business, fundraising in uncertain times and using new technologies.

Above: Pages 208-209 feature Giovanni Jance photos of ghost deer at the Seneca Army Base and the beginning of a story by Terry Tempest Williams entitled “Ghost Deer.” Photo: Tim Davis

Throughout Tools for Grassroots Activists are inspirational thoughts from acclaimed activists, such as Bill McKibben, Dave Foreman, Annie Leonard, Terry Tempest Williams and Brock Evans. To celebrate the release of the book, we’re sharing audio clips from the keynote speeches these activists gave at past Patagonia Tools Conferences. Today we’ll hear from Terry Tempest Williams. 

Terry Tempest Williams is a citizen writer who is passionate about wilderness, words, and birds. She is involved with the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program at the University of Utah, where students are exploring activism through the lens of storytelling as they focus on oil shale and tar sand development in America’s Red Rock Wilderness. Her book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks, will be published in 2016.

In this excerpt from her keynote speech at the 2002 Patagonia Tools Conference, listen to Terry talk about the Ghost Deer.

Listen to “Terry Tempest Williams at Tools Conference, 2002” by Patagonia on Soundcloud.

Patagonia Tools for Grassroots Activists: Best Practices for Success in the Environmental Movement, edited by Nora Gallagher and Lisa Myers. Available now. Order at Patagonia.com today.

Watch the book trailer. Video: Patagonia