{"id":10190,"date":"2015-03-25T12:34:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T17:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10190"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:13","slug":"williamstalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10190","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalist Williams: \u2018Pick a national park and fight for it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Terry<\/a>
Terry Tempest Williams (photo by Marion Ettlinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Author Terry Tempest Williams believes national parks are under siege, and on March 24 \u2013 in front of a crowd that included UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt<\/a> \u2014 she urged people to become informed about what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cPick a park and fight for it,\u201d said Williams, an environmentalist, naturalist and activist who is the 2015 Distinguished Writer-in-Residence<\/a> in the College of Arts and Sciences<\/a> at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. \u201cI\u2019m 59 years old, I\u2019ve been raised around the parks, but they are now absolute islands that are being whittled away by development.<\/p>\n

\u201cVolunteer, find out what the issues are and decide how you feel about it. Engage literally in the open space of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Folt, who introduced Williams at the event, first met the author in 2003 when Williams spoke at Dartmouth College.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard her say some memorable words that night,\u201d Folt said. \u201c\u2018Each of us can find our own path of passion, how we can be of use \u2014 to serve community in the name of a reverence for life.\u2019 That is such a powerful feeling, and I felt very close to it at that moment. That\u2019s also the way I feel about our community in Chapel Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

While at Dartmouth, Folt assigned her class of first-year students to read Williams\u2019 book \u201cRefuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was particularly meaningful because it managed, in a single book, to take things that mattered to me \u2026 my love of science, and in particular water and nature, woven together with a story of family and breast cancer,\u201d Folt said. \u201cIt talked about all the aspects of the human condition in that book.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the talk at the Genome Sciences Building, Williams discussed her upcoming book, which focuses on 10 national parks, from Grand Teton to Gettysburg to Gates of the Arctic.<\/p>\n

She called it her most challenging book yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisplaced people, lands taken, complexity. How do we write out of complexity?\u201d she asked. \u201cThe truth is: I love these lands. I\u2019ve spent most of my life walking in them, living in them, defending them. This book has in fact become the most personal for me. It\u2019s about my love for these American lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 23, Williams and other Carolina faculty panelists discussed \u201cNor Any Drop to Drink\u201d at an event highlighting UNC-Chapel Hill\u2019s academic water theme.<\/p>\n

A westerner by birth, Williams grew up in Utah near the Great Salt Lake \u2014 a site that has become central to her writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe largest mass of inland water west of the Mississippi is now shrinking,\u201d she said. \u201cIslands have become peninsulas, the salinity is rising and endangering biodiversity. Wildlife habitats and clean air are at stake. It\u2019s a landscape I hardly recognize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams visited the Rio Grande and Big Bend National Park while researching for her book. She said people are now calling the Rio Grande \u201cthe Rio sand.\u201d Still, she stressed, we don\u2019t need to focus on what\u2019s happening individually in these endangered waters but rather \u201cwhat this means collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have so much respect for what\u2019s going on at UNC-Chapel Hill, where you are not averting your gaze from these hard issues,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Williams will participate in a panel discussion March 25 at 3:30 p.m. in Greenlaw Hall\u2019s Donovan Lounge on \u201cMemoir and the Natural World.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s visit is sponsored by the Hanes and Hibbits families, the Office of the Chancellor and the department of English and comparative literature<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By Kim Weaver Spurr<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Terry Tempest Williams believes national parks are under siege, and on March 24 \u2013 in front of a crowd that included UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt \u2014 she urged people to become informed about what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fine-arts-humanities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47201,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10190\/revisions\/47201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}