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"I have never created a child," she says, "but I have created a life. We can give birth to deep change. We can give birth to a deeper way of living." Williams returned to the PIELC this year with her niece, symbolizing for many the new generation of activists. Callie Tempest, 19, is a freshman at Utah State University, an English major, with the same smile and the same love of humor as her aunt. Her father is Williams' brother, Steve, who now heads the Tempest family's construction company. Williams' talk centered on population, with the central question being "What about the other?" She read from her book, An Unspoken Hunger in which her family is gathered at a Christmas season dinner, and her brothers and father are discussing their frustration at a pipeline construction being held up to deal with desert tortoises, which are endangered. (In the story, Callie corrects one of the men's use of the word "turtle" to be "tortoise"; she's on her aunt's wavelength.) She also spoke about school trust lands near Moab that Utah was proposing to sell off to developers. It's critical mule deer habitat, and she described the community joining together 4 a Mormon mother with 12 children, men from the community -- to get these lands purchased as a public trust. She spoke about direct activism (a step that many writers feel will compromise their writing) to save these lands. "What do we choose to act on, and what do we choose to ignore?" Williams asks. She speaks of faith (a central topic of her Mormon community), and says, "Faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives." During her talk she urged any lawyers who wanted to help on this project to let her know, and it is reported that two unnamed lawyers did offer their services after the talk. She read from an essay tentatively called "The Birthing Rock" that will be printed in a National Geographic coffee table book. National Geographic had asked Williams if she would write an essay about the desert, and she submitted an essay with a theme of overpopulation. "National Geographic has a policy against writing about population," the editors answered at first. "Perhaps in the new millennium we could change that," she answered, and the editors finally agreed. The essay is a contemplation of a Southwestern desert rock some have termed the "birthing rock" because of its depiction of a woman giving birth to a round figure. "The simple truth: There are too many of us," she reads. She speaks of the need to "define family in another way." (Williams is doing that by spending lots of time with her extended family, including Callie and Callie's sister, Sara.) "Perhaps it is about sharing," Williams says. There is a "much-needed code of ethics for the rights of all beings on the planet." Giving birth to a new idea. Conceiving of birth as an act of imagination. Williams and her husband, Brooke, decided they will not have children, which is "blasphemy" in their Mormon religion (Brooke is a descendant of Brigham Young and describes his own departure from standard ways of living and his family's plumbing company work, in his book Half-Lives.) Williams approached population from three directions in her talk -- laying pipeline in desert tortoise habitat; selling school trust lands to developers in mule deer habitat; and defining family in another way. Williams places everything -- her religion, family, self, community -- in the context of the world and of meaningful living, and so takes on all kinds of topics that are hard for many. She still participates in the Mormon community; she is passionately involved in grassroots campaigns; she questions authority. Williams makes faith and the poetic imagination and attentiveness to all beings an accepted mode among activists. In taking on population in this talk, she is taking on the one single, enormous threat to all beings that most environmental organizations turn away from rather than face square on. She's helping make room for us all to take it on. After all, as she says, "It's core." -- Mary O'Brien Back to Environmental Law Conference Index
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Creating
a Life