The Spirited Review - An Unspoken Hunger

An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field by Terry Tempest Williams

It is hard to say what I like best about Terry Tempest Williams -- is it her obvious passion for the earth as a whole and her native western desert in specific, or her eloquent voice raised in protection of the land, or the sensuality that infuses her writing to such an extent that I can almost feel the dust, or the water, or the rock beneath my fingers as I read? Williams offers a powerfully feminine approach to nature: tactile, emotional, strong. As she says in the essay Undressing the Bear, "Why should we give up the dream of embracing the bear? For me, it has everything to do with undressing, exposing, and embracing the Feminine. I see the Feminine defined as a reconnection to the Self, a commitment to the wildness within..." And in the eight essays of An Unspoken Hunger, she provides a bridge back to that wildness. Also, unlike the majority of nature writers, Williams consistently remains in touch with her human relational world and her cultural and familial heritage.

Why might this matter? It is significant because many folks in the modern environmental movement have neglected, if not outright rejected, the need for interhuman relationships in favor of those between human and earth. Ultimately, this is an unworkable solution, alienating parents, lovers, and children -- all but the most isolate of hermits. Yet the environmental movement continues to pludge along espousing an antihuman perspective, missing the fact that if we are to honor the earth, our communities must be part of that earth too.

Williams does not make this common mistake. She writes, "As a writer and a woman with obligations to both family and community, I have tried to adopt this ritual in the balancing of a public and private life. We are at home in the deserts and mountains, as well as our dens. Above ground in the abundance of spring and summer, I am available. Below ground in the deepening of autumn and winter, I am not." She does not ignore the complexity of human existence -- the interactions with community, with family, with self, with the wild. The parallel between relational needs and seasonal ones is fitting and profound; like the earth, we need our full cycle of change, each part of our selves taking a time in ascendance.

The essays collected in An Unspoken Hunger have a wide focus. The first, In the Country of Grasses, takes Williams far from home, to the Serengeti and a search for wild rhinos. The Architecture of a Soul is a lovely tribute to her grandmother Mimi, remembering the shells that they collected together, while in The Village Watchman, Williams talks about her uncle Alan, unpredictable, "abnormal" and honest. In Cahoots with Coyote tells a story about Georgia O'Keeffe and her time in Palo Duro canyon, mirrored by Williams' own experience in Palo Duro years later when leading a group of fellow Mormons in an ecospiritual retreat. Yet for me, the three most powerful essays are Undressing the Bear, where she argues for a more intimate recognition of the wild, Yellowstone: An Erotics of Place, a passionate, committed, sensual call to the land, and The Wild Card, a message for women on behalf of rootedness, of health, and of the environment, a call to stand up for our home, as women "wedded to wilderness."

Like my experience with her Refuge, at the end of An Unspoken Hunger I felt as if I had taken a tactile journey into Williams' landscape. And although it is the western coast and the Sierra Nevada that have always held the key to my earth sense, under her tutelage the alien desert comes alive, vibrant, real. Through her eyes I can see the beauty of a red-hot landscape, so different from my own. Perhaps what I like best about Terry Tempest Williams is that she can raise even me up from a watery mind, that in her powerful expressions of desire for her homeplace, in those moments I can look upon the land of her love and begin to understand.

Click here to return to the Review index