I want honest conversations that do not end on the obligatory hopeful note. 
We do not get to sing that song anymore. There is a real world and it is dying. 
The Glorians

There is something deeper than hope that is calling us, writes Terry Tempest Williams in this astonishing book.  When we focus our attention on what she calls the ‘holy ordinary’ we are transported into a new way of being.

Just as the pandemic was breaking out, Terry (Thoreau is “Henry” in this book  so I feel I entitled to refer to her this way) had a dream that ended with these words: “Your vow is to create the epic documentation of the Glorians.”  She had no idea what a “Glorian” was and had to look it up.  None of the dictionary definitions provided a clue as to what this vow might entail. Over time Terry came up with her own: 

A Glorian is an encounter
A Glorian is a meeting with élan vital
A Glorian is a moment of grace

A Glorian can be a transformational dream. It can be a moment, memory, an animal, plant, root, eclipse, an ordinary or non-ordinary experience that pulls us into the Now when the cloak of linear time falls away, and presence is all there is.

Terry, an acclaimed naturalist and author, shares her personal encounters with Glorians but doesn’t define  who and what they are, as each person’s experience may be different. In one story she and a black widow spider listen to night sounds sitting side by side. In another she follows an ant’s perilous journey  across the desert floor as the insect transports a blossom to its home.  While dancing a star dance in the desert sands one night, Terry becomes one with cosmos. When a monstrous wall of water floods the canyon, fear drives her out the door to witness the awesome power of nature to shift whole landscapes. Glorians all.

“Any encounter with a Glorian reminds us that all nature is our kin, that we are intimately connected to ‘All There Is’ in our shared vulnerability and strength,”she writes. We may experience joy, awe, fear, the fragility or tenacity of life in this kind of communion.

Terry’s stories teach us about the radical act of attending to beauty and natural wonder, while moving forward against all the odds during this time of social, political, and ecological collapse. Terry ‘earths’ us in the present moment—the most powerful antidote we have to despair. It is through this attending, Terry  believes, that we can dream the Earth into a new way of being. Our shared experiences of the Glorians may help us construct a new bridge into our own future.

In one chapter, Terry, at that time teaching at Harvard Divinity School, writes about her encounter with Divinity, a two-hundred year old red oak beloved by many students and faculty that was cut down on the Commons to make room for a new building, despite heated protests that created division among students and faculty.

This tree had been planted when Harvard first became a university, and Divinity was a place where students and faculty gathered, both as individuals and in community. The rationale that Harvard used for taking down the tree was that Divinity was diseased and dying.  In truth, Divinity was healthy and barely in her prime; her heartwood was intact, as was plain to see once she was cut down. When Robin Wall Kimmerer came to witness Divinity before her death she put her hands on the trunk of the oak and said, “This is murder, we need to name it.”

“Every tree we choose not to cut down is a prayer for the planet,” writes Terry.

The night before Divinity lost her life, Terry lay on the ground beneath the tree breathing into what was to come. When she heard the words My Absence will be my Presence coming from the oak, she knew: Divinity was a Glorian.

The next day Divinity was chopped up and hauled away in pieces, before a chipper finished the job. Many heartbroken students and faculty bore witness. Only a weeping white stump remained.

Afterwards, Terry and a colleague stopped at a neighboring younger sister oak and noted that the tree had sap running from her trunk. The roots of Divinity still lay intact underground. Who knows what communication transpired between those two oaks.

At some point after the tree’s dismemberment, Terry had a vision of Divinity. Beyond the tree whole forests emerged, stretching across the horizon as far as she could see. All trees are our Ancestors, she thought; we share 50 percent of our DNA with these relatives of ours. Trees will thrive again. In my Absence will be my Presence.

The felling of Divinity parallels my own experience with whole forests that have been laid bare since I moved to  the Western Maine Mountains in the early 80s. When I first moved into my camp, situated on a roaring brook among mountains of fragrant evergreens stretching from horizon to horizon, I thought I had discovered paradise. The nightmares began almost immediately.

Whole forests were being slaughtered and there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening.  Within five years great rectangular holes began to appear on nearby mountains. I must have engaged in magical thinking because I never thought this devastation could occur on the steep and craggy granite mountains that surrounded my small, twenty-acre sanctuary.

I was wrong.

Everywhere I walked, the whine of chainsaws followed me. The giant yellow machines not only destroyed whole forests and compacted what was left of the soil, but exposed the now treeless mountains to the ravages of summer heat and erosion. Logging families who cared about their trees were forced out of business.

About six or seven years ago I also had a vision. I held a perfect blue green earth in my hand. All kinds of animals wild and tame streamed out of an ark into lush green forests, lakes, and streams that stretched across the whole planet. I was flooded with ecstasy. All would be well. Earth, her trees, her creatures would survive! I had been visited by a Glorian.

This experience helped me to understand that I need to locate myself in the present moment and the bigger picture to survive. I am still in transition.

Yesterday I watched my beloved dog zig-zag wildly across the road while chasing papery leaves that were being battered by howling winds. Irrepressible Joy interrupted my dark thoughts about losing spring as a season. Ah, my four- pound chihuahua is a Glorian, I heard myself say, and so she is.

This exquisitely poetic volume demonstrates the ways in which we can bear witness to ecocide, human suffering, and social and political insanity by staying awake, taking action, and not giving in to despair. Terry believes that those of us who love the earth must be willing to create a bridge to those who would destroy her through our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. Embodying this truth is a challenge I live with each day, but I know that Terry is right. Shared experiences with the Glorians might help us to make this bridge because they anchor and attach us to the wonder, awe and beauty of the only home we will ever know.

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