Terry Tempest Williams saved my life. As a BYU undergraduate suffering from late winter doldrums back in 1993, I heard her claim that you don’t really know your own place if you don’t know the local birds. She had no idea, but she had just slapped defibrillator paddles on my heart. I was a long-time birder but hadn’t been birding for months.
In this first volume of a planned two-volume documentary history of the Utah War, editor William P. MacKinnon has assembled a treasure house of previously unexploited documents to illuminate the decisions, actions, and bungling on…
Just as national histories are always written by the victors, religious narratives are often written by those who remain within the fold. The common tropes of conversion, devotion, dedication through trials, and faithfulness until death…
The other two are more patient than I am. They bide their time. What’s worse, Jonas is always telling me that I am shirking my duty. I haven’t talked to him in over a century.…
For Neal Chandler, il miglior fabbro “Is Mormonism still part of your Weltanschauung?” Aunt Doris asks me every time she sees me. She knows that at 2:15 on Sunday afternoons I’m blessing the sacrament like…
I never saw so many frogs;
neither did you. We walked
the tracks, sometimes stepping
from tie to tie, sometimes
walking the rail—holding
You are the gentle willow, who I often
thought looked weak. Your strong-willed
child that made her loud debut among
your branches, hanging
Fallow soil, windblown, is a rigid latticework
Pressed hard against patchwork fields etched with snow.
A river, drawn amblingly, God’s Hancock doodle,
Flows its cursive way across the whole.
On Sundays in rows of chaos,
Children shouting over a tinny piano,
Spring was popping popcorn —
Week after week, we took it in armfuls.
I was in the sheep business for years.
Sold off my sheep and got into the cattle business and now I have friends.
The cattlemen talk to me.
I suppose what finally drove me out was the predators.