Saving the American Soul — Or Trying To

Terry Tempest Williams is an adventurer in prose. Although she writes thoughtfully, she has an fierceness that gives her books great power. She’s revered by many readers I know for "Refuge," which explored the connection between the cancer that struck her family and the environment in which she grew up in Utah. As worthy as that book is, however, and as controversial as she is among the Mormons, in recent years she’s gone far beyond her personal story, delving into a painting in the Prado, oil industry devastation in the Rocky Mountains, and now, in an on-line column in Orion, the connection between the fallen in Iraq and the dying-out of the American Elm.

She tells of an arborist named Rufus Wanning, well-known in Maine for his devotion to the American Elm. He put his knowledge to work, checking every elm in the town of Blue Hill every week for the slightest sign of the dreaded Dutch Elm disease, and nipping it in the bud when he found it. There is no cure for the disease, and most American Elms now die before they mature, but Wanning’s vigilance has saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, of magnificent trees.

Now Wanning has given permission to a local peace group to allow his land to be used as a memorial to the fallen soldiers in Iraq. At a service, Williams writes:

Ann Ferrara spoke of three kinds of death: the one where breathing stops; the one where we are laid to rest; and the spiritual death that occurs when those we love are forgotten. She said, the first two cannot be stopped, the last one can. "We must not forget."

My eyes turned to the field of white flags and the magnificent elms that shaded them. I saw Rufus Wanning with his head bowed and his large hands clasped behind his back. In his humble stance, I thought about how his impulse to save trees is the same impulse to offer his land as a place of peace. And how the third death, the spiritual death that accompanies the act of forgetting must be extended to the remembrance of beloved lands as well as loved ones.

For me, the white flags of the fallen became the white tufts of cotton grass blowing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. My eyes blurred. Boundaries blurred. What are we being asked to sacrifice in the name of greed, in the name of lies? What are we allowing to be buried if we fail to act out of our love and our outrage? There is no separation or compartmentalization when it comes to the sacred nature of life. The war in Iraq and the war on our environment are fueled by the same oil relationships.

Terry Tempest Williams will be the writer featured this year by Cal State Channel Islands in an annual reading put on for the students, the professors, and the public. She will discuss her new book, The Open Space of Democracy, on Tuesday, November 8th, at 6:30 pm at Conference Hall. Call 805-437-8994 for more details…and take it from one who usually prefers books to readings: Williams is that rare talent who can mesmerize large crowds simply by reading out loud.