The Resonance of Stone

Terry Tempest Williams / October 30, 2020 / Activism, Planet

“Castleton Tower has a pulse. We have a pulse. The Earth has a pulse.”

Terry Tempest Williams lives in Castle Valley, Utah, with her husband Brooke. When she meets a team of geologists from the University of Utah who are studying the lifespan of rock formations within the Colorado Plateau, sacred landforms important to the religious beliefs of the Diné, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and other nations, she learns these geologic landforms sound alive; you just have to know how to listen.

In the process of being broken open, worn down, and reshaped, an uncommon tranquility can follow. Our undoing is also our becoming.

Listen to Terry Tempest Williams read “The Resonance of Stone” from her home in Castle Valley.

https://soundcloud.com/patagonia1973/resonance-of-stone-read-by-terry-tempest-williams

This essay, written especially for Patagonia, will appear in the new paperback version of Erosion: Essays of Undoing, by Terry Tempest Williams, published this fall by Picador.

Author Profile

Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer and environmental activist. Known for her lyrical prose with a spiritual depth and political edge, her books include Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, The Hour of Land, and most recently, Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated worldwide. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School.