VISITATION
By Terry Tempest Williams
Photography: Terry Tempest Williams
We were sitting on the porch watching light as one does in the desert. It was Basho who tipped us off, a feline who notes the slightest of movements. He was staring south. We were facing west. With a turn of our heads, a lenticular cloud was hovering over the valley, shape-shifting before our eyes into a flying saucer. In a matter of seconds, it rose from pink to gold to a swirling red-yellow-orange veering diagonally toward Round Mountain. I have heard Castle Valley is a site for alien spacecrafts. Not long ago, a neighbor forbade us to walk across her land because it was a landing site for such things. Here in the red rocks, anything is possible.
Terry Tempest Williams is the author of sixteen books, including “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place,” “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” “The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks” and “Erosion: Essays of Undoing.” Her work is widely anthologized throughout the world. She lives with her husband, Brooke Williams, outside of Moab and is a writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School.