429 Quotes by Terry Tempest Williams

I feel that within the Mormon culture there is a tremendous amount of fear – of women’s voices, of questioning of authority, and ultimately of our own creativity.

All we have is time.

Our ability to travel is a privilege. But it is also a choice. Money is time. Where do we spend out time? Wilderness is not my leisure or my recreation. It is my sanity.

This is the Hour of Land, when our mistakes and shortcomings must be placed in the perspective of time. The Hour of Land is where we remember what we have forgotten: We are not the only species who lives and dreams on the planet. There is something enduring that circulates in the heart of nature that deserves our respect and attention.

Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance – the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty.

The legacy of the Wilderness Act is a legacy of care. It is the act of loving beyond ourselves, beyond our own species, beyond our own time. To honor wildlands and wild lives that we may never see, much less understand, is to acknowledge the world does not revolve around us. The Wilderness Act is an act of respect that protects the land and ourselves from our own annihilation.

Perhaps it is not so much what we learn that matters in these moments of awe and wonder, but what we feel in relationship to a world beyond ourselves, even beyond our own species.

Wilderness offers us a template to an enlightened citizenship. Instead of only caring for ourselves, we are invited to care for species other than our own.

Our institutions and agencies are no longer working for us. It is time to reimagine the wilderness movement as a movement of direct action, time to reimagine our public lands as sanctuaries, refuges, and sacred lands. Time to rethink what is acceptable and what is not.