832 Terry Tempest Williams: The Glorians

We survived the COVID pandemic, but what did it teach us? Perhaps we still need to acknowledge what it cost us.

I think if we do not grieve properly, then our grief will come out sideways.

Coming up, author Terry Tempest Williams helps us make sense of the times we're living in, and what's feeding the underlying unease Americans of all stripes seem to be feeling lately.

She shares what she's observed from the red rock desert of southeast Utah to her role at the Harvard Divinity School in Boston.

That's the gift of the desert for me, living there 30 years, is the desert has taught me not to look away.

Terry helps us recognize how the ordinary all around us might offer a key to how we recover as a society.

You know, I think there's something deeper than hope, and that is engagement.

I hope you can stay with us for what promises to be an extraordinary hour ahead with our special guest, Terry Tempest Williams, on Travel with Rick Steves.

It had been a while since we spoke with Terry Tempest Williams here on Travel with Rick Steves.

When we recorded our last conversation with Terry back in 2019, she had just written the book Erosion: Essays of Undoing.

We tried to make sense of the losses many of us felt at the time, at attempts to discredit science and to stifle efforts to address the causes of global warming.

Since then, we've been through a pandemic, and now a second Trump administration keeps us on our toes as they unravel protections for people, wildlife, and the environment on an astonishing scale.

Terry's known for her environmental and conservation activism, as a gifted writer and speaker, and as an educator in her native Utah and at the Harvard Divinity School.

When we heard she had a new book coming out, we knew it was time to reconnect and to hear how she's been responding to the latest challenges in our world.

The hour ahead is the heart-to-heart conversation we had.

You could explain some of the anxiety and discord that America's living through today as symptoms of a kind of long COVID, a long COVID that all of our society is experiencing and struggling with together.

The world we've known seems to be disappearing, and that actually provides an opportunity for us to make our world a better place to call home.

That's the opinion of author and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams.

She explores the kind of courage and awareness required of us to bring about a more cohesive future, and that's the point of her latest book.

It's called The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

It's all about finding beauty in our fellow creatures and in our relationships with the people we encounter day after day.

Terry's been a favorite guest of ours here on Travel with Rick Steves over the years, and a lot has happened in the seven years since she's been with us.

Let's find out what she's been observing, learning, and thinking about along the way.