Book completed

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, by Terry Tempest Williams. I hadn’t read this environmental classic before, and as I started it, I was quite surprised that several of the early pages were so dry. Oops, that’s almost a bad pun. That is, several of the early pages were focused on the depth of the Great Salt Lake, during years when it was rising beyond what it had been in modern times, with far more numbers than one would expect from a book that’s considered so emotionally profound. But I kept going. Eventually it was obvious that in this case, the numbers were themselves infused with emotional impact, not just dry statistics, because the lake was gradually flooding a valued bird refuge.

Williams weaves together the problems caused by the rising waters, her own love of the great many bird species that live in or visit her area, and – above all – the relationships she had with her mother and grandmother as they were dying of cancer. Her mother was only 54. I envied how close she was to both women, and I also envy her writing skill, conveying so much so well.

Only after her mother has died does she bring up the likely cause for the very high cancer rate among people who have extraordinarily good health habits (they’re Mormons) – it was the nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s, for which they were downwind, as Nevada and Utah were considered “empty” places by the bureaucrats who decided this was important. The way she waited until the end to raise this issue made it especially powerful. I’m glad I read the book, and I’m looking forward to reading more of her writings.