What is a Glorian? Almost a Review of Terry Tempest’s book by Sara Wright

There is something deeper than hope that is calling us writes Terry Tempest Williams internationally acclaimed naturalist, environmentalist, and author in The Glorians. When we focus our attention on what she calls the ‘holy ordinary’ we are transported into a new way of being.

 A Glorian can be a life changing dream like the one Terry had that inspired the title of this book. “Your vow is to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians,” she was told as she reached the top of  a tower by way of a spiral staircase.  “What the hell is a Glorian” her father asked. A Glorian can be a  moment, memory, an animal, plant, root, eclipse, an encounter with self or with others, an ordinary or non -ordinary experience that pulls us into the Now when the cloak of linear time falls away, and presence is all there is.

Terry shares her experiences with Glorians throughout the book but refuses to define who or what they might be believing that each person’s perceptions are different.

 In one incident she and a black widow  spider listen to night sounds sitting side by side. In another she follows an ant’s perilous journey  across the desert floor as the insect transports a blossom to its home. One night while dancing a star dance in the sand Terry becomes one with cosmos. When a monstrous wall of water floods the canyon, fear drives her out the door to witness the awesome power of nature to shift whole landscapes. Glorians all.

Any encounter with a Glorian reminds us that all nature is our kin, that we are intimately connected to All There Is in our shared vulnerability and strength. Feelings of joy, awe, fear, or the fragility/tenacity of life are highlighted when we engage in this kind of communion.

 What Williams can teach us about the radical act of attending to beauty and natural wonder while moving forward against all the odds during this time of social, political, ecological collapse is immeasurable. Terry ‘earths’ us in the present moment, the most powerful antidote we have to despair. Terry also believes that we are dreaming the earth into a new way of being.

  In one chapter, Terry, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School writes about her encounter with Divinity, a two- hundred year old red oak beloved by many students and faculty that was removed from the Commons to make room for a new building despite heated protests that created division among students and faculty.

This tree had been planted when Harvard first became a university, and Divinity was a place where students and faculty came together as individuals or in community. The rationale that Harvard used for taking down the tree was that Divinity was diseased and dying, a threat to students, a familiar story.

When Robin Wall Kimmerer came to witness Divinity before her death, Robin put her hands on the trunk of the oak and said, “This is murder, we need to name it”.

“Every tree we choose not to cut down is a prayer for the planet,” writes Terry.

The night before Divinity lost her life Terry lay on the ground beneath the tree breathing into what was to come. When she heard the words, My Absence will be my Presence coming from the oak she knew. Divinity was a Glorian.

The next day the tree was chopped up and hauled away in pieces before a chipper finished the job. Only a weeping white stump remained.

 In truth, Divinity was healthy and barely in her prime; her heartwood was intact. Afterwards, Terry and a colleague stopped at a younger sister oak and noted that the tree had sap running from her trunk. Only the roots of Divinity still lay intact underground. Who knows what communion/ communication transpired between the roots of those two oaks.

 At some point after the tree’s dismemberment Terry had a vision of Divinity. Beyond the tree whole forests  emerged, stretching across the horizon as far as she could see. All trees are our Ancestors she thought. Trees will live again. In my Absence will be my Presence.

The felling of Divinity continues to parallel my own experience with whole forests that have been laid  bare over a period of forty- five years.

When I moved into my camp that was situated on a roaring brook with mountains of fragrant evergreens stretching from horizon to horizon I thought I had discovered paradise. The nightmares began almost immediately.

Whole forests were being slaughtered and there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening.

Within five years great rectangular holes began to appear on nearby mountains. I must have engaged in magical thinking because I never thought this devastation could occur on the steep and craggy granite mountains that surrounded my small twenty-acre sanctuary.

I was wrong.

 Everywhere I walked the whine of chainsaws followed me. The giant yellow machines not only destroyed whole forests and compacted what was left of the soil but exposed the now treeless mountains to the ravages of summer heat and erosion. Logging families who cared about their trees were forced out of business.

Advocating for all trees fiercely, writing and talking about them in classes I taught at university and elsewhere, approaching every person I knew trying to bring this massacre to people’s attention forced me to realize that no one cared. I gave up trying to talk to humans and started to talk to trees instead. But I kept on writing to save my sanity though I published little about trees except natural history.

 It was too many years before I finally understood that it was my job to be a compassionate witness to what would evolve into the massive carnage I presently live with.

About six or seven years ago I also had a vision. I held a perfect blue green earth in my hand. All kinds of animals wild and tame streamed out of an ark into lush green forests, lakes, and streams that stretched across the whole planet. I was flooded with ecstasy. All would be well. Earth, her trees, her creatures would survive! It was only afterwards that I realized there were no people. I had been visited by a Glorian.

This experience helped me to understand that I needed to locate myself in the present moment and the bigger picture to survive. I am still in transition.

Yesterday I watched my beloved zig-zag wildly across the road while chasing papery leaves that were being battered by howling winds. Irrepressible Joy interrupted my dark thoughts about losing spring as a season. Ah, my four- pound chihuahua is a Glorian, I heard myself say, and so she is.

 The Glorians is an astonishing book. This exquisitely poetic and sophisticated volume demonstrates the ways in which we can bear witness to ecocide, human suffering, and social, and political insanity by staying awake and not giving in to despair. Terry believes that those of us who love the earth must be willing to create a bridge to those who would destroy her through our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. Embodying this truth is a challenge I live with each day, but I know that Terry is right. Sharing our experiences with the Glorians might help us to make this transition because they anchor and attach us to the wonder, awe and beauty of the only home we will ever know.