"Each of us finds our identity within the communities we call home," writes Terry Tempest Williams in Erosion, a galvanizing new collection of essays that navigates the emotional, geographical, and communal territories of home. Sizing up the assaults on America’s public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open spaces of democracy, Williams fiercely examines the many forms of erosion we face—of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. From the gutting of sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest to the undermining of the Endangered Species Act, Williams testifies about the harsh reality of the climate crisis and how our earth—our home—is being torn apart. One of today’s most important writers and conservationists, Williams is the award-winning author of The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; and When Women Were Birds. Discussing her new essays, Williams blazes a way forward through dispiriting times to arrive at new truths about the beauty of human nature.

Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most knowledgeable and elegant voices of the American West. She brings to her writing, in the words of the poet W.S. Merwin, "the dedicated observation of a naturalist and the abiding innocence and excitement of an open heart." Williams is a Naturalist-In-Residence at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. A member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Williams is committed to protecting Americas Red Rock Desert. She is a recipient of a 1993 Fellowship for Nonfiction from the Lannan Foundation. Among her books are An Unnatural History of Family and Places and An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field.

This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Upon her mother's passing, Williams inherited three shelves of journals. Not only was it a shock that her mother kept journals, but it was also a shock to see what the journals contained-pages and pages of blank pages. In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams-author of the iconic memoir Refuge-creates a soaring meditation on the mystery of her mother's empty journals, always asking, \"What does it mean to have a voice?\"