Can you make any convincing birdcalls?

I can. A great horned owl.  And I have called many close, respectfully, during a full moon.

What is your most treasured comfort meal?  

Grilled cheese sandwich with jalapenos and a bowl of tomato soup.

Have you ever been bitten by an animal, wild or domestic?

Yes.  I have been bitten by a black widow, a brown recluse, and a hobo spider. The black widow bite brought forth aching hallucinations; the brown recluse created an expanding blistering circle that left a dent on my left inner thigh; the hobo spider gave me a tattoo on my calf in the shape of a small horseshoe.  But I never kill a spider – they create a web made of silk from their own bodies like writers creating a web of words . . . .

What is a species you feel is frequently misunderstood? 

A coyote – bless them.

In what environment do you feel most at home?

I have an energetic homeline that runs from the Northern Rockies through the Great Basin to the Colorado Plateau which translates in place to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Great Salt Lake, and the red rock desert of Southern Utah to the Four Corners. From Livingston, Montana through Yellowstone and the Tetons to Salt Lake City to Castle Valley, Utah to the Four Corners where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona share a common point is my welcome territory. Home greets us all along the way with family and friends, alongside familiar plants, birds, and animals, rivers, lakes, mountains, and canyons. Ravens, red-tail hawks, mountain bluebirds, white pelicans, mule deer, and pronghorn, can be seen throughout. Bison, wolves, and grizzlies, north; coyotes and mountain lions, south. Aspens, Douglas firs and lodgepole pines, in the Yellowstone; cottonwoods, pinyon and juniper down south. Sage is the scent with the melody of meadowlarks that binds us together in the interior west.

My favorite tree in the world is ___.

A cottonwood tree because in the desert it means shade and water is near. There is one great elder in the valley that we all bow before, one of the oldest cottonwoods in the southwest.

Nature would be better without ___.

The current Trump administration. Period. Every week, another obscure ruling or law used to unravel our public lands, sacred lands, be it the Boundary Waters, Grand Staircase National Monument, or somewhere else, along with assault after assault on the EPA, climate legislation,  the Endangered Species Act, and our clean air and clean water laws. It’s all hands on deck to keep the open space of democracy open.

What is something you’re looking forward to?

When the Earth crisis is taken seriously by those in power, so the lives both human and wild that are suffering as a result can be liberated. This includes climate collapse, alongside the loss of biodiversity.

What was your last memorable animal encounter?

At home: This morning, with eight inches of fresh snow in Castle Valley, Utah, a herd of dozens of mule deer came into our yard looking for bitterbrush. A doe and her fawn walked up to the window and we held each other’s gaze.  I could count the number of eyelashes on her large brown eyes.

Away from home: Snorkeling in Panama in shallow water over a large bed of sting rays covered in sand, when one very large ray lifted up their tail missing my stomach by an inch or two!

Do you have any unusual hobbies, hidden talents, or superpowers you’d like to share?

A hidden talent?  Drinking good mezcal. I will leave it at that, except to say superpowers do emerge.

If you could, regardless of the local climate, reach out of your kitchen window and pluck a fruit from a tree, bush, or plant, what would it be?

A persimmon. I love their color. Or I could pluck a ripe pear and eat it in hand, right away.

Bring home The Glorians and get to dreaming today

If you could make pancakes with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

My grandmother. She made buckwheat pancakes for us whenever we stayed overnight. At the breakfast table, she would ask what dreams we may have had before we awoke. It was always a lively discussion as we passed the syrup. On one occasion, I told her of a dream where I crossed the street to our neighbors’ house and found the sliding glass doors open in the backyard. I walked inside and stood up on the stone hearth. Just then, an owl flew in and landed on my shoulder. My grandmother’s face lit up, “Oh darling, how wonderful, I believe you are about to menstruate!” Not exactly what I wanted to hear! We discussed the symbol of the owl and its association with the Moon, how it is also associated with Athena, found in the folds of her robes. Would you believe me if I told you, my period did come in the following days?

Do you remember your dreams now? 

I try to. It’s discipline and a practice. I always have a small notebook and pencil by my bedside to record my dreams the moment before I wake up, so I don’t forget them. My grandmother was a Jungian scholar, and when we shared them with her she would create a list of the key elements and symbols and then we could look up what they meant in her dictionary of dreams. We would write down what the symbol meant to us; and what the symbol means to the collective unconscious.  And we would find a map for our souls or perhaps, as story of meaning.

My new book, The Glorians is based on a dream I had on March 20, 2020, one week after the world shut down because of a global pandemic caused by the coronavirus. In my dream, I was met by a woman who asked if I remembered the vow I had made?  “Remind me,” I asked. “Your vow is the epic documentation of the Glorians.” I woke up. I had forgotten my vow, but remembered my dream. “What is a Glorian?” This is what I have been documenting for the past six years. Forgetting and remembering are siblings, they can reunite in the dreamtime.

Would you jump at an opportunity to go into space? Why or why not?

I would love to sit on the Moon and rotate the positions of my chair as the Little Prince did when he sat on his “little planet” he called Asteroid 325 from where we watched forty-four sunsets in one day.

What are some of your favorite words?

Petrichor. Rain. Datura. Raven. Radiant. Wings. Gift.

Do you have a favorite folklore or fairytale?

I adore Trickster stories.  They are filled with excellent ideas on how to behave.

Who are some of your heroes or heroines, real or fictional?

Rachel Carson. Wangari Maathai. George Washington Hayduke, alias Douglas Arapahoe Peacock. Yo-Yo Ma. The Women of Bears Ears. My friend Becky Duet. My mother and father.

Who is a character from literature or film with whom you intensely identify? 

Alice from Alice in Wonderland. “Curiouser and curiouser” – I can still quote the lines from the first stanza of “The Walrus and the Carpenter”:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

What is something new you’ve done recently?

Visited the Vatican.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve witnessed or experienced in nature?

Swimming next to a whale shark near the equator in the Galapagos. This immense, graceful being registered as a self-contained galaxy in motion.

Are you optimistic about the future?

Yes and no.

What is a smell that makes you stop in your tracks?

Fear.

Want to read more from Terry Tempest Williams?

Consider reading “Dreaming With Water”, a conversation between Terry and Robert Macfarlane, next!

Do you have a writing/art-making routine?

I do, but I would call it a ritual, not a routine. I light a candle on my desk before I begin to write.

Next to the candle, I have a small bowl of water to remind me, even if nothing appears on the page, day after day, week after week – or when I throw away more pages than I keep, something is happening, the water level is going down, evaporation is taking place – invisible processes are at work.

Which of your books’ subjects or characters haunts you the most?

The Glorians. They are difficult to define. Easier to identify. Mysterious shape-shifters.

When you enter a bookstore, where do you head first?

Poetry.

Where did you grow up?

Next to my mother as she was dying. And again, next to Great Salt Lake as she is retreating.

What song or album reminds you of high school?

Song: “White Rabbit” sung by Grace Slick. Album:Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens/Yusuf.

What did an average Friday night look like for you as a teenager? 

When we were bored or brave, we would hike up to the Mormon Vault up Little Cottonwood Canyon where all the LDS Church’s genealogy records are stored inside a granite mountain.  We would sneak up to the iron rod gate where you could see inside doors and we would wait to hear the cries of the “vault babies” locked inside. All sorts of folklore existed around stolen babies who were taken there. Inevitably, we would hear their desperate cries, listen as long as we dared – and then, run down the mountainside, praying we didn’t get caught, and jump back into somebody’s car who was old enough to drive and race home.  I later learned the cries were actually pikas calling from the rocks.

If authors had walk-up songs like professional baseball players do, what would yours be?

This makes me smile – I can think of other songs for other writers.  But for me? A chorus of coyotes howling in the desert would be just fine.  I often howl with them.

Okay, but what if you’re in a situation where you simply must sing karaoke. What’s your song? 

Well, the last time I sang karaoke, I may have had two margaritas and sang “Cherish” by The Association. Rick Bass and Doug Peacock may have been there. I think Brooke (my husband) walked out.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Where we live now: In a small community in the red rock desert of southeastern Utah.

What would you like to be most remembered for? 

Saying yes when it mattered.

What flower would you want pinned to your breast after you die?

A sprig of spring sage.

If you could come back as any organism, who or what would you be?

A canyon wren in a particular crease in a hidden canyon above the Colorado River.