pamiverson's review against another edition
4.0
A favorite nature author looks at our current world and the damage in so many areas from so many angles. She focuses a lot on Bears Ears National Monument and other southwest sites. Thought-provoking, disturbing, a call to action.
jcstokes95's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
2.25
Erosion is an essay collection reflecting on all the ways we have wrecked havoc on our land, our laws and on each other for profit and power. The essays cover disparate topics, with the American West being the only real throughline; we hear stories about Trump’s attack on indigenous sovereignty and their land, about the impact of oil barons on the landscape of the West and on the challenges of loving difficult family. This is a lot to cover in one piece. My enjoyment of these essays wavered constantly throughout. It felt like there was no center to hold onto throughout. By the mid-point, I felt unengaged because I no longer could connect with what I was reading. Tempest writing can sometimes be beautiful, but the more I read, the more I tended to feel it was painfully overwrought. This blunted her messages.
There are surely standout essays here. I was fascinated to hear about how activists bought oil leases as protest and how the government attacked them mercilessly for it (though, did not love the one piece in interview format). I feel I learned much in those pieces and there is some great nature writing, I also enjoyed the pieces about the Sage Grouse. And as many reviewers have said, A Beautiful, Rugged Place and Dwelling are just, knockout essays.
However, there is a lot of painful middle here that dilutes the beauty and weight of the text. I feel more editing could have made this a stronger collection. I will also say, Williams’s writing style is not my preferred one; the flowery, twisting language makes it hard to follow a thread. It often makes the essays (even the strong ones) feel like they lose their point and their punch halfway through. I just found myself…bored part of the way through. It took me several months to get through this because I was often disengaged. Especially, as Williams’s own personality can be a bit grating; since she is often at the center of her stories, it’s hard to ignore the inconsistencies in her practices. I wanted to fall head over heels with this, but unfortunately it was not a full-throated win. I think if you are more into the poetic and essays that produce a “vibe” over a thesis, you may like this more.
There are surely standout essays here. I was fascinated to hear about how activists bought oil leases as protest and how the government attacked them mercilessly for it (though, did not love the one piece in interview format). I feel I learned much in those pieces and there is some great nature writing, I also enjoyed the pieces about the Sage Grouse. And as many reviewers have said, A Beautiful, Rugged Place and Dwelling are just, knockout essays.
However, there is a lot of painful middle here that dilutes the beauty and weight of the text. I feel more editing could have made this a stronger collection. I will also say, Williams’s writing style is not my preferred one; the flowery, twisting language makes it hard to follow a thread. It often makes the essays (even the strong ones) feel like they lose their point and their punch halfway through. I just found myself…bored part of the way through. It took me several months to get through this because I was often disengaged. Especially, as Williams’s own personality can be a bit grating; since she is often at the center of her stories, it’s hard to ignore the inconsistencies in her practices. I wanted to fall head over heels with this, but unfortunately it was not a full-throated win. I think if you are more into the poetic and essays that produce a “vibe” over a thesis, you may like this more.
tgrvs78's review against another edition
5.0
In this amazing collections of essays, the author goes to great depths to capture of experience in nature and takes grave responsibility to ask what are our obligations to the earth? How does that translate for government who views it as a commodity? There are beautiful and moving excerpts from indigenous peoples that challenge our capacity to listen and see ourselves as an expansion of earths splendor. Truly something to behold.
swoody788's review against another edition
5.0
I don’t think there’s another author out there who I identify as closely with as Terry Tempest Williams. Both raised Mormon, departing after the recognition that it wasn’t compatible with our soul, connected to the earth in a spiritual way, compelled to write thoughts and observations down, etc. Every few years I read another of Williams’ books and am completely blown away by how elegantly she can express many of the things I am feeling, as well as offer new perspectives for me to consider. She is the mentor I’ve always needed and ached for. This may be her best one yet. I was riveted by the audiobook, which she narrated.
estromdotcom's review against another edition
5.0
This was just a hard book to get through, but so, so rewarding to finish. I've been recommended Tempest Williams' works by a lot of people, and I see why: she draws from the land so intuitively as a partner in her writing; her words are just as much the brainchild of her southeastern Utah landscape as herself. It's the kind of writing I aspire to, and a kind of connection to her world that I hope to cultivate with mine.
The overarching premise is of literal erosion-- the slow process of wearing down something until, eventually, it gives way, ceases to exist. But the caveat to TTW's explorations of erosion is that something new is formed from that process, and it is part of the cycle of birth, death, renewal, grieving, and starting again. Her main concerns are on the erosion of life as she knew it, around the erosion of truth and democracy and, most importantly, the decision by the Trump administration to reduce the Bears Ears National Monument, a holy site to several Native tribes in the area, by nearly 90 percent in 2017. I remember seeing the Facebook profile frames that went around Mines declaring "Save Our Public Lands" around this time, but not until reading this, three years later, did the shock and scope of what that decision meant hit me. To lose so much, to see such history and beauty and connection with our world lost to oil and gas development, it feels like too much to bear. It is a death in itself.
Coincidentally, the two essays most powerful for me were about death. TTW recalls life and death and vitality and the symbols we draw for ourselves of those concepts in one essay about the euthanization of her dog Rio and the death of her brother Dan. The former was a shock to read, and I had to steady myself by burying my face in my own dog's fur, but it prepared me for the emotional gravity of what followed. The old notions of the world are eroding away, and the ugly truths about humanity are revealing themselves; beauty and compassion are eroding , our senses of self and connection are eroding as the dirt beneath our feet crumbles beneath us and Utah's public lands are eroded by development, mineral and fossil fuel extraction, and time. I felt that same ache, that grief, that TTW writes in this book. It is so difficult to grieve the world's slow, violent collapse, but in this book there is space to do so. And there is beauty in that final transformation, the death of the known form; that is what her second essay about death touches on.
TTW saw her brother's death after a long conflict with depression and addiction as a needed release of the soul, a "final act of self-care," as she puts it. She explains that it was the last thing she saw her brother's soul needing to do to finally feel at peace, shed the burden of a hard-lived life and transcend into something different, something new, something unknown and free. And that's the premise of this entire book; we don't know what comes next. But we know we will have to face it, and we will need to work with each other and the rhythms and languages of nature to eke out a new existence together.
This world is eroding, vanishing, and changing into something new. Change is terrifying, loss is terrifying, and the kind of change and loss we see around us, what TTW sees around her in southeastern Utah-- these changes and losses are so stark and huge and unfathomable to really know how to grieve. But TTW at least offers a new trail through that grief in this book, leading to a new state of acceptance on the other side. It's some of the best nature writing I've ever read.
The overarching premise is of literal erosion-- the slow process of wearing down something until, eventually, it gives way, ceases to exist. But the caveat to TTW's explorations of erosion is that something new is formed from that process, and it is part of the cycle of birth, death, renewal, grieving, and starting again. Her main concerns are on the erosion of life as she knew it, around the erosion of truth and democracy and, most importantly, the decision by the Trump administration to reduce the Bears Ears National Monument, a holy site to several Native tribes in the area, by nearly 90 percent in 2017. I remember seeing the Facebook profile frames that went around Mines declaring "Save Our Public Lands" around this time, but not until reading this, three years later, did the shock and scope of what that decision meant hit me. To lose so much, to see such history and beauty and connection with our world lost to oil and gas development, it feels like too much to bear. It is a death in itself.
Coincidentally, the two essays most powerful for me were about death. TTW recalls life and death and vitality and the symbols we draw for ourselves of those concepts in one essay about the euthanization of her dog Rio and the death of her brother Dan. The former was a shock to read, and I had to steady myself by burying my face in my own dog's fur, but it prepared me for the emotional gravity of what followed. The old notions of the world are eroding away, and the ugly truths about humanity are revealing themselves; beauty and compassion are eroding , our senses of self and connection are eroding as the dirt beneath our feet crumbles beneath us and Utah's public lands are eroded by development, mineral and fossil fuel extraction, and time. I felt that same ache, that grief, that TTW writes in this book. It is so difficult to grieve the world's slow, violent collapse, but in this book there is space to do so. And there is beauty in that final transformation, the death of the known form; that is what her second essay about death touches on.
TTW saw her brother's death after a long conflict with depression and addiction as a needed release of the soul, a "final act of self-care," as she puts it. She explains that it was the last thing she saw her brother's soul needing to do to finally feel at peace, shed the burden of a hard-lived life and transcend into something different, something new, something unknown and free. And that's the premise of this entire book; we don't know what comes next. But we know we will have to face it, and we will need to work with each other and the rhythms and languages of nature to eke out a new existence together.
This world is eroding, vanishing, and changing into something new. Change is terrifying, loss is terrifying, and the kind of change and loss we see around us, what TTW sees around her in southeastern Utah-- these changes and losses are so stark and huge and unfathomable to really know how to grieve. But TTW at least offers a new trail through that grief in this book, leading to a new state of acceptance on the other side. It's some of the best nature writing I've ever read.
kellyrosen's review against another edition
5.0
This book reached out and touched me right at my core. It is a journey through wilderness, love and resistance.
dawndeydusk's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
A snapshot of the landscape through Tempest’s (and the community’s) eyes. Stories of erosion weaved in with eroded policies, eroded values, eroded relationships. Uniquely human and yet not not always centering on the human. I wish I had read this earlier. But I am happy to have read it now.
lilliv's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Her voice is very powerful. Kind of repetitive.