Terry Tempest Williams
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The last time Antonio Mays Sr. heard from his son, it was in a note the 16-year-old left in the family's garage. He told me he was going to make me proud. Antonio Jr. left home to join a protest in Seattle. A week later, he was shot and killed there. I need some arrest made, justice for my son. Listen to We Keep Us Safe on the Embedded podcast from NPR.
What's something you still feel you need to prove to people you meet? What comes into my mind, if I'm honest, the minute you ask that question, is that I'm not crazy. We all have powers. And I think we all tamp them down so that we're not too big, we're not too much, we're not too smart, we're not too sensitive. So I think just being a woman in a misogynist culture, I think... I don't know if we have to prove we're not crazy, but we're always being asked if we are. Yeah. Or treated as if we are. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me.
My guest this week is the writer Terry Tempest-Williams.
I called my father a month before the book came out, and I said, Dad, I'm so worried it will be read as gossip in our neighborhood. Have I told things I shouldn't have about the church and about family? I'm so nervous. And he goes, don't worry about it. No one's going to read it anyway.
I first met Terry Tempest Williams about 25 years ago at a writer's conference I was covering as a young reporter. Terry was raised in the Mormon church, but she had created a more expansive kind of spirituality for herself that made a huge impression on me. To this day, Terry's writing always reorients me towards what is good, what is beautiful, and what is true.
Her new book is called The Glorians, and I am so very happy to welcome Terry Tempest Williams to Wildcard. Hi! Hi, Rachel. It's so good to see you. It's so good to see you. I have on my cowboy boots in honor of our shared interior west. Interior west. Okay, so we're going to get right into it. Memories, round one. Terry, I'm going to hold up three cards. You just pick randomly, okay? One, two, or three. However the spirit moves you. One, two, three. Let's say one. Let's do it. What activity gave you a sense of freedom as a kid? Watching clouds. Watching clouds. I don't know if that would be viewed as an activity. Totally. In terms of physicality. But I do remember lying on our front lawn for hours watching clouds.
Really? And just shapeshift and seeing animals. morph into birds, morph into fish, alligators, you know, profiles of people that I knew. It was a companion to my imagination. And I felt completely free. Did a grown-up show you how to do that? Or do you remember being instructed in some way about how to use your imagination? Or is it just, you just saw things?
Yeah.
it wasn't an instruction. It was being pulled upward, you know? And, but I do remember, um, my grandmother, we called her Mimi. We would always lay on what she called the, um, It was like a chaise lounge, you know, on her couches. And we would listen to music or we would listen to bird calls. She was quite extraordinary. And then one day I remember she said to her, just let your mind go blank. And I tried so hard, Rachel, and my mind would not go blank. And I thought, what is wrong with me? And I just said, Mimi, I can't quiet my mind. I can't. It doesn't go blank. And I don't remember what she said, but I think it somehow connected to the clouds because when I was watching clouds shapeshift, my mind was completely present and focused and that was the closest i could come to having an empty mind yeah okay let's keep going three more cards one two or three three were you obsessed with a particular cosmic question as a kid um
Was I obsessed with a particular cosmic question? Mm-hmm. You can define cosmic however you want. I was incapacitated by ritual. Incapacitated by ritual. I had to perform my own rituals, or I felt the world would be out of balance, or something would happen to our family.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–10:13
2
How did Terry Tempest Williams describe her childhood rituals and watching clouds as a source of freedom?
10:13–19:55
3
What childhood superstitions and family rituals shaped Terry’s sense of meaning?
19:55–28:51
4
How did Terry explain emulating her parents after her mother’s death and finding her voice?
28:51–47:44