Graduate Student Joel Thorarinso with Terry Tempest Williams
When meeting Terry Tempest Williams, you cannot help but feel a personal connection. Even if you have never had a conversation with her, or even read one of her books, there is something about her that makes you feel comfortable and, if even for an hour, this makes you feel like a part of her life. There are certain people that have an immediate affect on their surroundings when they enter a room. Some can have a certain infectious brightness; others are the life of a party no matter where they are. With Terry Tempest Williams, the feeling is less superficial. When she looks at you, it is as if she is sharing a part of herself in a glance, and this disengages a person’s social defenses so that in the moment of a glance you feel as though you have known this person your whole life. Meeting her is truly a spiritual experience, a sensory experience, an emotive and soulful sigh of peace, if even for just a lunch-hour conversation with a room of graduate students.
And this is precisely what Dartmouth students experienced meeting her. Twenty-three students from the Arts and Sciences graduate programs and Dartmouth Medical School came to hear the writer facilitate an informal discussion about life and death, spirituality and the environment, and the importance of familial bonds and community involvement. In reality, just like in life, all of these topics are intertwined, the attachments and links demonstrated by Terry Tempest Williams in a striking personal impromptu narrative from a woman whose voice was so soothing that it literally brought some to the edge of tears.
“Exuberance and empathy,” was her message. “Exuberance, I cannot think of another word that celebrates life more,” and empathy, the ability to relate to the feelings and sufferings of one another. Both feelings, both values play a powerful role in her writing and also in the way she lives her life. Her voice, which is soothing and welcoming, her tone is low and deep, a voice never harsh, her life of trying to embrace the suffering and feelings of others is carried literally in every sound that she utters – is a personification of both of these values – her voice shows a life lived, her tone conveys empathy.
The discussion invariably turned to death. Any conversation about life must, at least, brush up against death. Refuge, her most famous book and one read by many in the audience, is a book, in part, about the loss of her mother. “Death is at the heart of every thing we do but we never talk about it,” she said. “It is our companion, at our side, all of the time.” Grief was a big part of the discussion, but like a good therapy session, people emerged from their catered lunch emotionally more astute but also more aware and appreciative for the time to share, to feel, to experience deeply the thoughts of a writer who was so in touch, and so very honest with her own human condition. “If we can’t acknowledge death, do we acknowledge life?” Her question lingered, floated above the group of students, the question simple, but revealing. To acknowledge death takes a brave and honest look at life and Terry Tempest Williams gave a first hand insight into the human condition, an example of this bravery, and an example of refreshing honesty.
“Most of the day I am doing nothing,” she confessed of her writing process. “I am waiting. Writing is a natural process, like evaporation, we might not see it going on but it is happening.” As a writer she keeps a candle lit in her workspace, a sacred space she says, one that is spiritual. She also has a bowl of water nearby, in the writing room, because even if she is not writing anything, it is good to know that there is still evaporation - that something is happening in the room. “Writing is saying the things you don’t want to say, and this takes stamina.” Those who are fortunate enough to have read her work, and even more fortunate to experience meeting her, are certainly thankful that she says them.
~Ian Isherwood
