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,...
Mother had one quilt square made by a friend of hers framed, and hung it in her bathroom, where she saw it first thing in the morning. When I asked her why this mattered, she said, It represents how w...
I wonder what would happen if you gave up your need to be right?
I want my life to be a celebration of slowness.Walking through the sage from our front door, I am gradually drawn into the well-worn paths of deer. They lead me to Round Mountain and the bloodred side...
I received my first tutorial on voice. Each of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.
I personally have seen flamingos throughout the state of Utah perched proudly on lawns and in the gravel gardens of trailer courts. These flamingos, of course, are not Phoenicopterus ruber, but pink,...
I believe every woman should own at least one pair of red shoes.
Humility is born in wildness. We are not protecting grizzlies from extinction; they are protecting us from the extinction of experience as we engage with a world beyond ourselves. The very presence of...
Hindsight shows us our blind spots and biases; we can recognize ourselves as human beings caught in the cultural mores of a specific time.
Devil spelled backward is Lived.
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 beaut...
And so we polish our own lives, creating landscapes and canyons and peaks with the very silt we try to avoid, the dirt we disavow or hide or deny. It is the dirt of our lives—the depressions, the loss...
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our at...
Writing becomes an act of compassion toward life, the life we so often refuse to see because if we look too closely or feel too deeply, there may be no end to our suffering. But words empower us, move...
Wilderness is not a place of privilege, but rather a place of probity, where the evolutionary processes of life are free to continue.
Wilderness is not a place of isolation but contemplation. Refuge. Refugees.....Wilderness is a knife that cuts through pretense and exposes fear. Even in remote country, you cannot escape your mind.
What was it like when your mother passed away? I asked Mimi. I was twenty-eight years old. I had just given birth to John when I found out Mother had died from a stomach ulcer. A sudden infection. She...
We borrow. We steal. We purchase what we need and buy what we don't. We acquire things, people, places, all in the process of losing ourselves. Busyness is the religion of distraction. I cannot talk t...
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room fo...
Terry, to keep hoping for life in the midst of letting go is to rob me of the moment I am in.