What if beauty dwells in the margins of our undoing and remaking?
Erosion is a collection of essays depicting the ways that modern priorities and lifestyles have led to the spiritual, physical, and political erosion of communities in the United States. At the core of Williams’ melodic, impassioned writing is a deep connection to her homeland of Utah and an earnest empathy for all living beings. Written over the last several years, Williams examines environmental legislation and the political environment that enabled the gutting of national monuments and the auctioning of public lands to the Big Oil industry. These acts of aggression are emblematic of new incarnations of colonialism that deny indigenous sovereignty and the right of the American people to access wild spaces that are central to cultural identity and vitality.
Informed by her own journey from the Mormon church to a unifying “cosmic faith”, Williams unravels the delusions and misplaced priorities that led to the oppressive, consumerist culture that is threatening life-giving systems. Her stories encourage readers to embrace the entire spectrum of human reactions to the long-term and everyday tragedies we are living through—sitting with our sorrow and grief, remaining hopeful, and pushing the boundaries of what is comfortable and normal to us in order to make progress.
Williams writes about the landscape not as a privilege to be cherished, but as the very lifeblood that enables us to flourish. To ignore its needs is to ignore our own during this precarious transition into ecological and political collapse. Erosion is both historical, and deeply personal—a glimpse into an individual’s heart as well as the collective consciousness of a nation.
Not until we begin to understand the true costs of what we have lost and the pain we have inflicted on people and nature through the destruction of fragile landscapes and communities in the commodification and extraction of the Earth, can a healing between us take place. Our collective crisis of conscience and consciousness in this era of climate change is based on self-delusion, privilege, and our sense of entitlement, all of which continue to fuel the power and rapaciousness of our appetites. It is killing us.
ode to shelf-care 