In Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, she recalls many of her memories. There were a few details that stuck with me as I read the story, and that could later be related to another detail. Williams begins her story by talking about the Great Salt Lake. She recalls an experiment she did in school involving water levels and how that effects the environment. Next she wrote about a family of owls that she would annually come across. She described their home, and what she felt when she discovered their home had been destroyed. Williams had a connection with these birds that is hard to describe. Williams then explained how she was raised and her beliefs. Growing up as a mormon Williams was always told that lineage matters. "As a people and as a family, we have a sense of history. And our history is tied to land." This sentence caught my eye because it relates to Williams and her family, as well as the owls. Williams spent a lot of her childhood watching birds in their habitat, and their history was clearly present in the land. Like the owls, Williams land was destroyed and she suffered. Utah had been used for years as an atomic bomb testing area. This caused the women in her family to get cancer, and eventually die. Throughout this piece it was very apparent to me that Terry had deep connections with her environment. At times the environment was her spiritual place, and a place she learned about life, and at other times it was a place of destruction. The small details that Williams wrote about related to more than just herself or the owls.
(What specific details stay in your mind? Why? How do these small details lead to larger ideas?)
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