Air Date: September 4, 2026

FULL SHOW

SEGMENTS

Blocking New UK Oil and Gas

View the page for this story

Great Britain is Europe’s third largest oil and gas producer, even with a commitment to a net-zero economy by 2050. A small group of climate activists is helping the UK meet that target by winning a Supreme Court decision that’s blocking any new UK oil and gas projects that don’t assess climate impacts. Sarah Finch of Surrey, near London led the fight against proposed oil and gas drilling in the region known as the Weald, and she’s been recognized with the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe. She joins Host Steve Curwood. (13:03)

An Indigenous Bison Harvest

View the page for this story

Efforts to bring back bison are helping to revive Indigenous culture on lands across the US West. And as Colorado Public Radio’s Sam Brasch reports, this revival is taking place right in the city of Denver. (05:02)

Toad in the Desert / Mark Seth Lender

View the page for this story

In parts of the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico, the landscape can sometimes appear entirely still. Or at least until a red-spotted toad hops into view, as Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender tells it. (03:28)

Terry Tempest Williams on 'The Glorians'

View the page for this story

The Utah desert with its raw beauty has long been a muse for writer Terry Tempest Williams. In her 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, she explores miraculous moments of grace that call for our attention, even in spaces that may at first seem unremarkable. Terry Tempest Williams joined Hosts Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering for an online Living on Earth Book Club event. (24:12)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

260904 Transcript

HOSTS: Jenni Doering and Steve Curwood

GUESTS: Sarah Finch, Terry Tempest Williams

REPORTERS: Sam Brasch, Mark Seth Lender

[THEME]

CURWOOD: From PRX this is Living on Earth

[THEME]

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERINGG: And I’m Jenni Doering.

Concerned residents of a heavily wooded part of England secure a Supreme Court win that blocks new oil and gas drilling in the United Kingdom.

FINCH: I was actually shocked when I saw that notice. I couldn't believe it. I thought, what oil wells in Surrey? We're in a climate emergency. You know, this is not a time to be opening up new sources of oil anywhere, not in the Weald, but not anywhere else either.

CURWOOD: Also, writer Terry Tempest Williams on finding the “holy ordinary” in the desert.

WILLIAMS: And for 3 hours we walked that path of water and talked to each other and learned from each other. We had a hydrologist amongst us, we had a geologist amongst us. And these are the kinds of things that I think bring us together and remind us what we share rather than what tears us apart.

CURWOOD: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

Back to top

[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards Of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

Blocking New UK Oil and Gas

DOERING: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth, I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

Great Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution back in the 18th century, and into the 20th century it burned some 30 gigatons of coal as it built a massive empire. Coal is no longer king, but Britain is still deep in fossil fuel, extracting oil and gas from the North Sea as the third largest oil and gas producer in Europe, even with a commitment to have a net-zero economy by 2050. A small group of climate activists is helping the UK meet that target by winning a major court decision that’s blocking any new UK oil and gas projects that don’t assess climate impacts. Sarah Finch of Surrey, near London led a group of local activists in a fight against proposed oil and gas drilling in the region known as the Weald. The Weald Action Group eventually appealed all the way to the UK Supreme Court to win a major victory based on climate concerns. On the line is Sarah Finch, and she's winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Europe – Congratulations!

FINCH: Thank you

CURWOOD: And welcome to Living On Earth.

FINCH: Oh, thank you for inviting me.

CURWOOD: Today, you live in Surrey, England, near Weald. What makes this area so special to you and your neighbors there and the local action group?

FINCH: Okay, well, so the Weald, it covers three counties in southeast England. It's close to London, so it's a very developed, densely populated area, but it's also very wooded. It's the most wooded county in England. There's lots of small villages, small towns, isolated farms, with woodland all around, but as well as being kind of rural and beautiful, we're also sitting on top of a huge oil field there. So there's tensions between the rural way of life and the desire to industrialize it.

CURWOOD: Imagine that oil field underneath you there is related to what's out in the North Sea, huh?

FINCH: It's a particular kind of tight geology that we have. So it's not easy to extract the oil from the Weald by conventional means. It requires kind of fracking type technologies. So it's very small scale compared with the North Sea. So I think 98 percent of British oil comes out of the sea. It's only 2 percent comes from these small onshore sites dotted around the countryside. So it's not really very significant in terms of energy security, but it is significant in terms of the damage that it potentially can do.

CURWOOD: Yeah, I don't imagine that one would want a fracking well right in your neighborhood.

FINCH: Nobody does. So it's in the 2010s when these new technologies sort of became available coming from America, that there was a rash of applications for fracking type operations across the Weald and so in all of the towns and villages where there was a prospect that locals got organized to resist it, and then we came together, and that's when we formed the Weald Action Group.

CURWOOD: So Sarah, in 2010 in fact, you see a newspaper notice about a company planning to explore for oil. What, just six miles from your home there in Surrey? There have been some gas drilling nearby before that. What made this project so alarming in your mind?

FINCH: So I was actually shocked when I saw that notice. I couldn't believe it. I thought, what oil wells in Surrey. It just seemed really strange, but then looking into it, I did find out there were similar applications all around the area.

CURWOOD: Hmm. Now, UK Oil and Gas has touted a vision to transform your region into a new Texas. What does that vision look like to you?

FINCH: Well, yeah, they published this brochure setting out the many billions of barrels of oil that were in the area, and the fact it would need several thousand wells all closely packed together to exploit it all. So they were painting a vision of a very industrialized operation. It would have meant very large numbers of tankers on our narrow, kind of winding country roads, potentially huge local air pollution, water pollution, noise at night, light at night would be 24-hour drilling. So the prospect was alarming. And over and above all that, all of those local impacts, of course, there's the climate issue that we know now that it's the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal that have led to the rising temperatures that we're experiencing that are causing, you know, extreme weather dangers and threats to us. So over and above, all of the local industrialization issues with the knowledge that we just don't need to be drilling for new oil at this time. We're in a climate emergency. You know, this is not a time to be opening up new sources of oil anywhere, not in the Weald, but not anywhere else either.

CURWOOD: So in the fight to stop oil and gas exploration in the Weald, your group lost a number of court decisions along the way. What kept you going?

FINCH: Yeah, so I have to say we did have some successes in the Weald as well. There were a number of sites that we did manage to get turned down or the operators withdrew their applications. But this one site nearest to my home, Horse Hill, they applied for successive planning permission. So they got two permissions approved for exploratory drilling. And then in 2019, they got permission for 20 years of production, so they already had two wells by that stage. And then they applied for four more wells and 20 years of production, and at that point, when that was approved, we just thought, no, we can't accept that this decision was right. And we went to court and yeah, it was a long battle. We got our application to have a decision refused twice, but we persisted, and then we had a court case and lost it. We went to the Court of Appeal, lost again. But we were powered all the time by just the conviction that we were right. That the particular argument we were making was that when Surrey County Council approved this plan, they didn't look at the climate impact of burning the oil that was to be produced. They looked at the small amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would be produced on the site itself, but not when the oil was taken off elsewhere, refined and burnt. And we argued that under our Environmental Impact Assessment Law, they needed to have looked at those emissions. And it was just the conviction that we were right, and then also that it didn't just apply to this one site, but this was a bigger problem of other oil and gas and coal operations that had been approved across the country, so including a new coal mine that had been permitted. You know, it would have been the U.K.'s first new deep coal mine in 30 years, but it had been approved without any assessment of the climate impact of burning the coal. Similarly, two large oil fields in the North Sea approved without any consideration of their climate impact. And so we knew that this case, we were fighting over one relatively small site in Surrey actually would affect the whole of the U.K. oil and gas and coal sector.

CURWOOD: So this is interesting that you were looking really at the whole nation. What was different about the local judges that said, no, no, no, this is we don't have to worry about this. And then the highest court says, Oh, wait, we do. What made the difference, do you think?

FINCH: As we climbed higher up the court system, the judges were looking at it in a different way. So the first judge in the High Court treated it very much as a planning matter, and sort of looked at planning law, which planning policy, at that time we felt was out of date and out of step with climate policy. But when we got to the Supreme Court judges, they were just looking at as a very simple matter of, you know, the common sense reasoning, they understanding the scale of the climate emergency and looking at the wording of the law that the decision makers have to look at the full, all of the expected direct and indirect impacts of their development. And it all really came down to whether or not these greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil are an indirect effect of producing it, which we always argued that they were. And I think the Supreme Court judges took a very common sense approach to that decision. And we felt so vindicated when we won in the Supreme Court. Just thought, yes, this is exactly what we've been saying for five years, and now the highest judges in the land agree with us.

CURWOOD: So let me see if I have this right. The decision you got which, by the way, the first named party in the decision is a Finch, so you're named, I guess, in British law, going forward from today. What exactly is the national implication of this decision? Does this mean that can't drill for oil anymore in the North Sea, can't extract coal from Newcastle or any place else?

FINCH: No, it doesn't mean that, because it's a procedural matter rather than a decision making one. So it means that when plans are being considered to drill for oil or gas or coal, before the decision can be made, there has to be a full assessment of the climate impact of the use of the end product, not just of the production process itself. So that's a big change. And so after we won that case, immediately, sort of like knocking over dominoes, a number of other big sites were found unlawful. So the coal mine that I mentioned, the Rose Bank oil field, which is the biggest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea, and several other projects as a result, were then found unlawful and sent back to the drawing board, and the government realized it had to rewrite the guidance for developers to tell them exactly what they had to do to comply with this, yeah, the Finch Ruling, as it's called. And just to be clear, it's not a new law. The Supreme Court didn't create a new law. They just clarified what the existing law said that hadn't been being followed properly.

CURWOOD: So just to make it clear, what the U.K. Supreme Court ruled is that the downstream impact of burning coal and oil and gas must be considered in the process of any sort of approval.

FINCH: Yeah, exactly.

CURWOOD: And that makes it pretty tough, if you look at the downstream effect of burning fossil fuels and what's going on with the climate emergency. I mean, how does a company get around the climate emergency?

FINCH: Well, we have yet to see if they will, but the arguments they've been making are that if you look at the climate impacts of any one development in isolation, then of course, it is a drop in the ocean of all of the emissions that are being produced around the world all the time. So they try to argue that it's insignificant because it's small in comparison with total emissions. But the government, in its new guidance to developers, has said that they can't do that. They have to look at it in conjunction with all other existing and planned projects. Another argument that the industry uses is that, well, if you open a new oil field here, another one's going to close down. But that's not the way it happens. So they're not allowed to pretend that there's a ways of mitigating a new oil field. If they want to say that the emissions will be captured by carbon capture and storage, as some do they, they are now required to actually say where and when this will happen and where precisely that infrastructure is to capture those emissions, which, in reality, doesn't actually exist at scale anywhere in the world now. I'm optimistic that this ruling has made it effectively impossible for anyone to approve new oil and gas in the U.K., but we have to wait and see and there are arguments being made by pro-fossil fuel forces, and it has become something of a culture war, with politicians on the right of the divide being very pro-new UK oil and gas and others against. So yeah, although it seems to many of us a matter of kind of logic and morality that you don't produce more oil and gas in a climate emergency, there's always politics getting in the way that we have to deal with too.

CURWOOD: Tell me, what's the most important lesson that local communities can learn about trying to stop fossil fuel exploration that threatens their quality of life, that threatens the planet?

FINCH: Well, I think our story is just very encouraging in that basically we were a small group of concerned ordinary people, and we spent years fighting those oil fields in the Weald through various means, through protest and other means. And then eventually we won through a legal challenge. We're just ordinary people, and we managed to achieve a huge change, even against something as big as climate change. So change is possible. And I think what I've seen along the way is we have far more allies than I realized. The oil and gas industry is very powerful. You know, it has friends in high places, but it's not invincible.

CURWOOD: Sarah Finch is an environmental activist, and right here from Surrey, England, part of the Weald Action Group, and she's the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize Winner for Europe. Sarah, thanks so much for talking with us.

FINCH: Thank you.

Related links:
- Sarah Finch’s profile at The Goldman Environmental Prize
- The Goldman Environmental Prize
- Watch The Goldman Environmental Prize video profile of Sarah Finch

Back to top

[MUSIC: Spare Parts, untitled waltz #105 in a manuscript tune book by Michael Turner (1796 - 1885) on The Regency Ballroom: English Country Dance Music from the era of Jane Austen, by Michael Turner, bfv music]

DOERING: You can hear our program anytime on the Living on Earth podcast or on our website, loe dot org. There you’ll also find pictures and a full transcript. And at loe dot org you can sign up for our free, weekly newsletter. You’ll be able to catch up on that week’s show, read exclusive letters from our staff, and get notified early about upcoming events. It’s a great way to connect with Living on Earth in between episodes, so you never miss out on the latest environmental news. We also invite you to share feedback of any kind by emailing comments @ l-o-e dot org. That’s comments @ l-o-e dot O-R-G.

DOERING: Coming up, Native American tribes rekindle their ancestral connections with bison. Stay tuned to Living on Earth!

ANNOUNCER: If you’re one of Living on Earth’s listener supporters or if you’ve been considering a donation to LOE, this message is for you. As a non-profit news organization, listener support is vital to LoE’s weekly effort to bring you up-to-date environmental news and information. Your gift to LoE makes a difference and makes our work possible. So thank you!

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Stan Samole, “Inch Worm” on Childish Dreams, Public Domain/arr. Stan Samole and David Antonacci, MCA Records/Jazz Inspiration]

An Indigenous Bison Harvest

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering. Efforts to bring back bison, those huge grazers that once roamed the prairies in vast herds, are helping to revive Indigenous culture on lands across the US West. And this revival is taking place right in the city of Denver, which bought a handful of bison more than a century ago to display as a wild west novelty for tourists. Now, the herd has a new role – helping Denver’s Indigenous residents connect with their heritage. Colorado Public Radio’s Sam Brasch reports.

[SOUNDS OF SOMEONE SPEAKING IN A NATIVE LANGUAGE]

BRASCH: It’s a cool, clear morning when Lewis TallBull welcomes a crowd to Daniels Park, an area on a ridge south of Denver, overlooking the city’s skyline.

TALLBULL: I’d like to say good morning to each and every one of you. It’s good to see you.

BRASCH: TallBull is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. He wears a flowing black shirt and moccasins. A fenced area nearby holds half of the city’s roughly 70 bison — known as buffalo in Native communities. For the last seven years, the city has allowed the TallBull Memorial Council — a group founded by Lewis’s grandfather — to slaughter one of those bison each fall.

TALLBULL: A young warrior's gonna lose his life today. But in that way, he's gonna provide life.

[SOUNDS OF PEOPLE WALKING]

BRASCH: After a ceremony, TallBull leads the crowd to the edge of the fence.

[SOUNDS OF GATE OPENING]

BRASCH: He takes a handful of men through a gate, towards a corral holding a 600-pound bull. We watch one of them steady a rifle. And then…

[GUNSHOT AND WAR CRY CHORUS SOUNDS]

BRASCH: The bison collapses to the ground. These kinds of ritual harvests are common on reservations. Many tribes keep bison to help restore the species — a species white settlers nearly exterminated because it sustained indigenous people.
Modern herds again provide a reliable food source. During the recent government shutdown, for example, some tribal governments slaughtered bison to make up for the loss of federal food benefits.

[SOUNDS OF PEOPLE CHATTING]

TALLBULL: Us Indians who are forced to live in the city, we don't have anything like that.

BRASCH: Even though census data, it shows nearly three quarters of American Indians live in urban areas.

TALLBULL: That's what we're doing is, we're bringing these traditional ways and these bison harvest that only happen on reservations to the inner city, urban communities.

BRASCH: It’s a mission few cities can help with. Ryan Phillian manages the Daniels Park herd as a ranger with Denver Mountain Parks. He watches from a distance as elders pay their respect to the bison and a dance group begins to perform.

[SOUNDS OF DRUM PERFORMANCE]

PHILLIAN: This is uh, by far the biggest event that we’ve had down here and every year it seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

BRASCH: Originally kept as zoo animals, Denver moved its bison to mountain parks in the early 20th century. The grazing space is limited, though, so the city historically held an annual bison sale.

[SOUNDS OF DRUM PERFORMANCE]

PHILLIAN: ….where we would auction off our calves every single year. Uh, and you could have come out and bought a baby bison.

BRASCH: The city began to shift its management strategies by donating a bison per year to the TallBull Memorial Council. Three years later, they ended the auctions all together, opting to instead donate excess animals to tribal nations and continue holding these harvest events.

[SOUNDS OF A FRONT-LOADER]

BRASCH: Native organizers want to make these events as traditional as possible, but right now it still involves some modern equipment. A front-loader arrives to carry the buffalo to a butchering area. Once it’s laid on a tarp, another circle forms to watch participants take it apart.

MAN: Yeah, you guys can move in closer if you want.

BRASCH: The process will take six to eight hours, yielding enough meat for more than 150 people plus a skull for ceremonies and nutritional supplements made from ground organs. It’s an experience nine-year-old Malcolm Sanchez doesn’t want to miss.

[SOUNDS OF DRUM PERFORMANCE]

SANCHEZ: I think I might get in, get in on that. Um, cutting that bison.

BRASCH: You, you think you, you can do it?

SANCHEZ: I’ve cut things before.

BRASCH: And he’s not grossed out by the gory scene in front of us. He’s pumped for the meat.

SANCHEZ: My mom like makes this soup thing, right? She puts in bison, onions, and then she lets that, like, cook inside of a slow cooker and it’s so good.

BRASCH: Sanchez says those meals make him proud to be Native, even though his family isn’t linked to a single tribe.

SANCHEZ: The only tribe I know I’m like part of is the Puebloan tribe. I don’t know the rest of ‘em because my family’s like a big mix.

BRASCH: That’s common in Denver — a city known as a crossroads for different Native people. TallBull is grateful the city has recognized its bison can help strengthen that community.

[SOUNDS OF PEOPLE CHATTING]

TALLBULL: Reestablishing our identity as Indian people, one percent each day is good enough. So this, this right here is a huge step for us and I think there’s only more to come.

BRASCH: He hopes to someday organize multiple harvests every year. That way, he says, more residents can affirm their Native ties, and Denver’s bison can recall their own heritage. Not as curious emblems of the Old West — but as food and cultural sustenance for Native people.

DOERING: That story by Sam Brasch comes to us from Colorado Public Radio.

Related links:
- Find this story on the Colorado Public Radio website
- See more photos of the ceremonial buffalo hunt
- Learn more about the history and importance of bison for Native tribes
- Read more about the InterTribal Buffalo Council

Back to top

[MUSIC: Michael Maxwell, “Rocky Mountain High” on Rocky Mountain Memories – An Instrumental Tribute to John Denver, orig. by John Denver, Avalon 2013]

Toad in the Desert

CURWOOD: In parts of the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico, the landscape can sometimes appear entirely still. Or at least until a red-spotted toad hops into view, as Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender tells it.

Toad in the Desert
Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge
© 2026 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

LENDER: The arroyo cuts through and through, into the red earth, winding and turning till it finds the living stone. Chert, blue-gray, flinty and pockmarked, and very old.
Sometimes the water in the arroyo runs fast, carves fast; Sometimes smooth and slow. And at the lowest point the polished sluice that results as the stream pours over the stone from drop pool to drop pool. It is quiet down at the bottom, here between the narrow walls. Even the stream, swift though shallow can hardly be heard. Nothing moves. No desert birds and nothing earthbound. Nothing at all. Until the red-spotted toad appears. Toad could be him could be her. The one consistent discriminating feature is the
throat. Dark patch, male, no patch, female. Except toad is muddy; and I can’t tell.
He(She) hops laboriously across the incline of chert, reaching the steep slabs of light colored sandstone, rests. Climbs. Rests. And carries on.
Toads live on dry land, even here in the Chihuahuan Desert where it is very very dry. A mud drenched toad is therefore odd, though not as odd as what lies in the stream. Underwater, in line with the current several hundred small black worms are attached to the sluice. Wetted, the chert beneath them looks white. The worms stand out. Unmistakable that they are alive and not some feature of the stone.
Muddy toads. Worms in water.

Strange…
That night, reviewing my photographs I realize the worms are not jet black but alternating dark and transparent segments. And that the tail end, has feet. Two small pink feet. At the other end the beginnings of eyes, the place where gills will
sprout and behind the incipient gills a translucent pouch that will become the body. Worms do not have feet, eyes, gills. The apparent absence of frogs and the presence of a red-spotted toad argues for the brief aquatic stage of a toad. And the worms that are not worms are becoming tadpoles. He(She) is Her, not him. They were her eggs and will be her progeny.
Red-spotted toads will live on.

CURWOOD: That’s Living on Earth Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender. For photos of that mama red-spotted toad, hop on over to our website, loe.org.

Related link:
Visit Mark Seth Lender's website

Back to top

 

Terry Tempest Williams on 'The Glorians'

[DESERT SOUNDS]

DOERING: Deserts that might appear barren at first teem with those toads and many other sights and sounds.

There are coyotes –

https://freesound.org/people/Marnie.Devereux/sounds/398600/

DOERING: Wind in the cottonwood trees…

https://freesound.org/people/Danjocross/sounds/579250/

DOERING: ….a never ending night sky, and once in a while, water comes and goes with a ferocity.

https://freesound.org/people/foosiemac/sounds/95130/

DOERING: The Utah desert with its raw beauty has long been a muse for writer Terry Tempest Williams, who lives in Castle Valley. Her environmental classic Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place interwove a story of environmental crisis with her mother’s battle with cancer.

CURWOOD: In her 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, Terry explores miraculous moments of grace that call for our attention, even in spaces that may at first seem unremarkable. She told us her book came to her in a dream in 2020 during the pandemic. And Terry Tempest Williams joined us for an online Living on Earth Book Club event. We asked her to start off by reading from a passage near the beginning of her book, one of her first encounters with a “Glorian.”

WILLIAMS: In late spring, fierce winds converge in our valley in the Red Rock Desert, a reliable occurrence that has shaped this erosional landscape. The winds are particularly strong one morning in May. I am outside admiring the coyote willow draped in magenta flowers, each one resembling a snapdragon blossom, only larger the length of my index finger. Suddenly, in a swoop of wind, our stone patio is strewn with flowers. They are too lovely to let lie. So I decide to gather them and bring them inside. I get a basket from the kitchen. When I return to the patio, the wind has blown most of them away. I bend down to pick one up, only to see it move. Not only does it move, it has legs. I realize the blossom is being transported by an ant. This wee little being appears as a small black boat with a large pink sail above its six-legged body, I follow it. for close to half an hour I walk behind the ant as it carries a petal clutched in its mandibles and moves across the patio at a quick and steady pace. It continues down the stone path from our porch, then sets off across the red sand, where I can see in the distance a thriving ant colony emerging from the desert floor like a raised fist. Each time a breeze comes up, threatening to blow the tiny ant over. A pair of attending ants appear to hold the ant steady, then disappear. Each time the ant is about to cross a perilous path, facing cracks between stones, again a pair of ants appear to ferry the ant across the chasm, and again disappear. The ant continues on its mission, projecting its strange shadow ahead as it approaches a wide patch of prickly pear. I think surely this will be its demise. The flower impaled by a spine, and then miraculously three ants appear to help lift the blossom above, around and over the cacti, and once on open ground, vanish. When the ant finally arrives at the ant colony I watch it slowly climb up the hill with the magnificent blossom intact. The ant reaches its destination, pauses, then lays the flower down at the entrance of its home, where it is instantly met by dozens of workers, who, in a frenzy of purpose, cut the flower into tiny pieces, each one carrying a part of the pink blossom down into their chambers, where I imagine they are lining a pathway to the queen. This is a glorian, the ant carrying the coyote blossom across the desert is a glorian, and a glorian is an encounter, a glorian in is a meeting with Elon Vital, a glorian in is a moment of grace.

CURWOOD: Thank you. I mean, you see why we have Terry with us with this book now, and why we are so lucky to have you with us, and be able to read this volume. You know, Terry, the last time we talked to you, we discussed your book, Erosion, and it was our last big live event before the pandemic.

WILLIAMS: I remember that.

CURWOOD: At the Cambridge Public Library. So, what's happened in your life since then?

WILLIAMS: You know, it's really bookhanded by you. I have to say, it's so interesting how life holds itself. What's happened to me? We weathered the pandemic. We now have a million citizens that we lost. All of us know someone that passed during this time. I've been teaching at the Harvard Divinity School, and we've been able to bring 20 students to Great Salt Lake as it's retreating, and that was so meaningful to see these students from Cambridge literally have 10 days in the wild where they could enter sun tunnels by Nancy Holt, that land art, or walk through Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, but most importantly, into the waters and feel the power of Great Salt Lake as our sacred mother, which our brothers and sisters in the Ute Nation have admonished us to call her that. We've also been through a lot together. We have a president that is beyond politics, and I think what we've seen is that alongside extraordinary cruelty we have seen extraordinary compassion, and I feel that at this moment of uncertainty, where there's so much beauty that remains, this is a place where we can stand steady.

CURWOOD: Thank you. This is not an easy place, though, to stand steady, is it?

WILLIAMS: No, it isn't, and change is all around us. Again, I think living in an erosional landscape where we are shaped by wind, water, and time, there's no expectation that things aren't going to change, and that might make it a little bit easier.

DOERING: Well, Terry, I wonder if one of the ways that you ground yourself in this time of uncertainty and change, you write about these night walks that you take in the desert, and you have this wonderful passage on page 31 You write, "deserts are nocturnal landscapes alive with creatures aligned with darkness, I move among them." What is it about this walking at night practice that really captivates you?

WILLIAMS: You know, it really was out of necessity, because during the pandemic in the summer it was so hot. I think we had 52 days of blistering heat, over 100 it got as high as 116 and you can't walk in the day when it's that hot, and so I thought I can walk at night, and what I learned is that our eyes adapt to darkness, and especially in the light of full moon, the red rocks become blue, you see the eye shine of deer, if you're lucky enough, you see the eye shine of coyote red and the eye shine of a jackrabbit that is red like flames, and you become so familiar with the changing sky, depending on the time of night that you go, that you begin to feel very comfortable orienting around a rotating sky, even the Milky Way rotates, and I had never experienced before, and I think it was about my eyes adjusting to the dark, how the Milky Way becomes dimensional. It wasn't just a smudge of stars, but actually you could almost pull it out into a third, fourth dimension. It was very wild, and I had a partner, Bianca, who she was 30 at the time, I was in my early 60s, and she was in Vermont, I was in Utah, and we ended up doing night walks together and writing letters to one another, audio letters, and I could hardly wait till the next morning to find out what my companion, my night walk companion saw where I was seeing deer, she was seeing cows where I was seeing the Milky Way, she was imagining it. So I think we found our people, whether they were the pods within us in proximity or our night walking companions.

DOERING: It's a lovely idea, the audio letters.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and I felt like I knew her so well that when we did a moon cycle from full moon to full moon, and when it was over, I think both of us grieved that intimacy of not only walking at night, knowing the other was walking too, but recording the letters, and then receiving them, and I have to say, I can only speak for myself, but there were times where I think I lost my mind. At one point, I pulled up a chair to a sacred datura, it's called a moon flower in some places, and you watch that flower unfurl, and every so often it'll just go poof and go a little further, and then it'll keep turning, and it'll go poof. If your nose happens to be where that poof is, you receive this powerful aroma. And I didn't realize how hallucinatory it was. And I hope I never hear the letter that I sent to Bianca, where I think that I was absolutely under the spell of sacred datura.

[MUSIC: David and Steve Gordon with Sequoia Artists, First Chakra Muladhara]

CURWOOD: We’re speaking with nature writer Terry Tempest Williams about her 2026 book The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. We’ll be right back after the break. Keep listening to Living on Earth!

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the estate of Rosamund Stone Zander - celebrated painter, environmentalist, and author of The Art of Possibility – who inspired others to see the profound interconnectedness of all living things, and to act with courage and creativity on behalf of our planet. Support also comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Dieter Huber, “Leben” single, Chill Pal]

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

Let’s get back to our conversation with author Terry Tempest Williams, writer in residence at Harvard Divinity School, whose 2026 book is The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

CURWOOD: One of the things that, as you were mentioning, that walking outside at night, you're so lucky and careful both where you live, because you have a truly dark sky out there in, in the desert, you mentioned that your friend in Vermont was sort of imagining the Milky Way, but when you're, when you're out there, I've spent a little time out there, like near Capitol Reef, and such, you have a really dark sky, it's so beautiful, huh?

WILLIAMS: We qualify as one of the 52 dark sky communities around the world, and that is a commitment. And we have a community that is very diverse in terms of ideologies. This is the one thing we agree on: a night sky of stars. And we don't have street lights; we have dirt roads, and all of us turn off our lights at night, and it is really a gift. What I didn't realize is that much of the Colorado Plateau, particularly in southeastern Utah, is one of the largest conglomerates of dark skies in the world, and I think if anyone wants to really experience that, you know, go to natural bridges, you can hardly see your hand in front of you.

CURWOOD: So, speaking of the desert, there's a couple of lines in your book that prompt this question. At one point, you say it's a choice to live in the outback of rural Utah, where you understand your neighbor, who says, "If you're not my friend, you're my target" and means it, right? Other words, "if you're not sitting at the table, you're on the menu," right? But you live there anyway, because confronting differences and accepting them means you expand with the territory, regardless of the species, regardless of the political persuasion. You can appreciate dark skies, and then you quote Albert Camus, you say "the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion". And then you write, "I like living near roosters who mark the morning of sunrise each day, we love, we live by the clock of crowing, that is our rebellion".

WILLIAMS: I do love living here, and I love my neighbors, and we've lived here now 30 years, and our differences seem less than when we first moved here, and I think that has to do with fire and flood and heat. We need each other. You don't have the luxury of not getting along. Our neighbors, the Williams, devout Mormons, they have a beautiful garden. And when we had those five flash floods in 2024, we relied on each other. I'm not sure what I gave them. I know they brought me beats. I think we were together, and I could watch clouds, and we alerted each other, and also another neighbor, very close, they are devout MAGA supporters. That disappears when you're all in danger of losing your homes, and for a good week we couldn't get out, the road was a river, and you rely on each other, and every time we see each other, that bond deepens. I remember we had a dinner party for some new neighbors that moved in where our other neighbors left right after these flash floods, and we wanted to welcome them and to let them know who the neighbors are, so that again we can create those bonds so that they're tight when necessary. It was so moving. We had Mormons around the table, we had Trump supporters around the table, we had government workers, we had a flint napper, we had radical environmentalists that made me look like Nancy Reagan.

Everyone was there. I was nervous. My partner, husband Brooke was nervous, and when they came in, I had a basket of stone hearts I had collected through the years, and when each person came in, they took a heart. We sat down in the living room, and we talked about, for our neighbors' sake, one thing that we loved about Castle Valley: it took an hour. It was a night sky of stars, it was coyotes howling. It was solitude, it was sage. And by the time we got to the table, we were in a state of tenderness, and origin stories began how we came to this valley, where we came from, and then it was Richard Williams, the patriarch in the Mormon Church, who said, I have a question for the table, where does the water want to go? And suddenly everything shifted, the table was cleared, maps came out, each person brought their expertise, and what evolved in that evening of very different-minded people was, what if we held an event for the community? We have about 250 people that live here, called Walking the Path of Water. And that's what we organized together, and we found where the old creek went, we saw where the flood came, and we put posters up. We thought maybe we'll get 12 people. Close to 60 or 70 came, and for three hours we walked that path of water and talked to each other and learned from each other. We had a hydrologist amongst us, we had a geologist amongst us, and it took us three hours. It was rigorous, and when we got to the town square, so to speak, we had a potluck, and nobody wanted to leave. And these are the kinds of things that I think bring us together and remind us what we share rather than what tears us apart.

DOERING: That's such a different way of looking at the world, too. Asking where the water wants to go, as opposed to, you know, prescribing where we want it to go.

WILLIAMS: That's right and so this community is growing together as we face climate change, as we face floods, as we face this 2500 year mega drought.

CURWOOD: So you're married to a man with the name Williams. You said the patriarch of the Mormon Church in that area is a Williams. Your family, I have the impression, came out to the Great Salt Lake. Your ancestors came out to this area, the Great Salt Lake, which I guess these days a little bit less of it seems to be less and less of the Great Salt Lake, and talk to us about the bison herd that's on what's now become a peninsula there at the Great Salt Lake, and for that matter, say more about what's important about this lake.

WILLIAMS: Well, Great Salt Lake right now is, I want to say a puddle by its own standards, and I've lived long enough to have seen it at its highest elevation, when it was the fullest, when it was flooding at 4,211.85 and now it's around 4,198 I think, or less. 4,188 is the lowest in 2023 It's probably 4,189 or 90. I didn't check recently, but there's a thousand square miles exposed. It's hard to imagine Grace Salt Lake is enormous. It's a remnant of Lake Bonneville, and it's a Pleistocene. It's a remnant of a Pleistocene lake, and we're worried those exposed playas now are laced with arsenic and cadmium and all sorts of toxins that, as these dust devils whip up, they are going right across the Wasatch Front, Salt Lake City with 2.5 million people. So we're in an environmental crisis. The bison remains steady on Antelope Island, and I'm smiling because I love them. I think they remind us about survival, I think they remind us about resiliency, I think they remind us about community, how they take care of each other, how they put the young bison in the center if there's danger, how they maneuver their bodies through deep, deep snow and survive. I can tell you a story.

DOERING: Yes

WILLIAMS: I love this

CURWOOD: Please do.

WILLIAMS: When we had this, when we had the students on Great Salt Lake, that's where we were staying for those days. We had one of the, we called them one of the czars of Great Salt Lake, one of the public servants that was charged with figuring out how do we bring water to Great Salt Lake, so that it can literally survive. And we had the Deputy Czar of Great Salt Lake there. We had our chairs outside around the fire, it was cold. It was morning. There was snow, and this was late March. And one of the students asked the deputy, "How do you feel about the Endangered Species Act?" because we were about to petition the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Wilson's phalarope, it's a small little shorebird that spins and creates a column of brine shrimp that then it can survive and eat. And he said "The endangered species has never saved a species", and right then we heard this rumbling, and we felt the ground moving beneath our feet. We all stood up, and there on the horizon were 600 bison stampeding our direction, and even the deputy said, "I stand corrected", and the irony was not lost on him. But it's that kind of magic that I think occurs when we are present, and I think when we are present we know what to do. When we are present we can say "I stand corrected," because we were met with another presence greater than our own, the Glorians, in this instance, 600 bison on Antelope Island in a retreating Great Salt Lake.

CURWOOD: Well how fair is it to say that you find glorians everywhere, or that we can find them everywhere?

WILLIAMS: I think they are everywhere, if we are present, if we slow down enough to see, if we favor our senses, and if we recognize the yearning that we have for other, other people, other species, moments of grief, and moments of compassion, the full range, I think, is there for us. This is a book where I didn't hold back, because I think we're in a time where we cannot afford to. This is a book where I took risks that in other books I have not, because I think that's what this moment warrants. You know, I talk about a global prayer that was offered, and I remember calling Jonah Yellowman, who is a medicine person in Monument Valley, Dine, Navajo, and I said, Jonah, do you want to join me? There is this global prayer that's happening, and he said yes, and it happened at 11 o'clock on a Sunday. As I was walking out where I say my prayers on our porch, I faced South Round Mountain, which is an igneous volcanic plug, and I had just, I think, for comfort and solidarity with my grandmother, whom I love, who taught me about dreams, I held this amethyst crystal in my hand as the prayer was internal. You know, it was just that people would stand in prayer around the world at this moment for those in the pandemic, and those who had this virus. All of a sudden my eyes were closed. I felt this fire burning inside Round Mountain, and in my mind's eye, I could see a small flame coming toward me. And would you believe me if I told you it entered my heart, and all of a sudden my entire body felt like it was on fire, my hands were so hot that I opened my eyes and I opened my hand where my grandmother's hand stone, that's what she called it, I could see where that crystal had been burned. Now that is not a story I would normally tell, except for to those closest to me, that is a story that normally I never would have written, but I trust that now, because I think we are evolving as a species to where we realize these issues that are so confounding, and that we are confronting, be it climate, be it ice in our neighborhoods, or be it a pandemic, fire, or floods, we do have the capacity to create a new way of being, to create a new way of seeing, and to me this collective evolution that we are seeing of consciousness is also a glorian. It is a moment where our focus, our collective focus, can change everything. And I'm not talking about hope, I think there's something deeper than hope, and for me that is engagement, again, being present wherever we call home, then we will know what to do.

[SFX: BIRD CALL Randolph Little; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library]

DOERING: And this is the call of that spinning bird of salt lakes, the Wilson’s Phalarope.

[SFX: BIRD CALL Randolph Little; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library]

CURWOOD: Terry, it’s amazing how you always bring us to the nature around us.

DOERING: It’s true, going back to the environmental classic Refuge, and
in this wonderful 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

CURWOOD: Terry Tempest Williams, it’s been so great to sit with you and celebrate nature in this world. Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Jenni, Steve, I cannot thank you enough, and to your listeners: we are all in this together. Thank you.

Related links:
- Find out more about Terry Tempest Williams
- Purchase your copy of The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams and support Living on Earth and independent booksellers
- More on the Wilson's Phalarope from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Back to top

[MUSIC: David and Steve Gordon with Sequoia Artists, First Chakra Muladhara]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation.Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Mia DiLorenzo, Abby Edgecumbe, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti Mclean, Nhung Nguyen, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Bella Smith, and El Wilson.

DOERING: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Allison Lirish Dean composed our themes. Special thanks this week to Friends of Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge. You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Music, and like us please, on our Facebook page, Living on Earth. Find us on Instagram, Threads and BlueSky at living on earth radio. And we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe.org. Steve Curwood is our Executive Producer. I’m Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

ANNOUNCER 2: PRX.