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Jun 4, 2001
On a lazy summer afternoon (all right, it's still officially spring) I curled up with a book and couldn't put it down. Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist and writer based in Salt Lake City, created a world for me in her work Refuge. This book chronicles the relationship between Williams and her mother, Diane Tempest, as Diane is living with cancer. The Great Salt Lake and the birds that take refuge on its islands are intertwined with this story of loss and healing.
The seasonal water fluctuations of the Great Salt Lake became severe during the 1980s. During this period, Williams' mother was diagnosed for the second time with cancer. As the lake level continues to rise, the water submerges the habitat of a multitude of bird species that inhabit the islands and marshes. Williams watches the slow disappearance of familiar birds, detailing life history, morphology, and behaviors-and taking something of each species into her personal life. She finds the space and solitude that she craves to examine her human relations and her feelings about life, hope, and healing. "The hostility of this landscape teaches me how to be quiet and unobtrusive, how to find grace among spiders with a poisonous bite. I sat on a lone boulder in the midst of the curlews. By now, they had grown accustomed to me. This too, I found encouraging-that in the face of stressful intrusions, we can eventually settle in. One begins to almost trust the intruder as a presence that demands greater intent toward life. On a day like today when the air is dry and smells of salt, I have found my open space, my solitude, and sky. And I have found the birds who require it."
In addition to expressing the fluctuating emotions she has surrounding her mother's decline, Williams creates the Western landscape as a frontier of harsh conditions and diversity of life. The salinity of the lake, the overwhelming heat, the brine flies couple with the cinnamon underfeathers of the curlew, the orange bills of the pelicans, snowy egrets spearing frogs. The landscape of her mother's death parallels the environment of the Great Salt Lake: Williams experiences the barrenness of loss and slowly becomes aware of a beauty in the midst of her grief.
For a bird-lover, this book reinforces the amazing diversity of form and function in the avian world. At the end of the book, the author provides a list of birds associated with the Great Salt Lake. For a nature-lover, Refuge reflects the sacred realm of the environment, a place to gain understanding of oneself. I believe Refuge will touch all women, as a story of a daughter and a mother changing roles throughout their lives together, learning from each other's experience, and feeling the refuge that landscape can provide. Each person can find her own refuge in nature, whether it be snow-capped peaks, the calming crash of ocean, or a favorite tree in your own backyard. Add this one to your summer reading list!
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The copyright of the article Refuge in Outdoor Recreation is owned by . Permission to republish Refuge in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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