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At the center of this landscape is the region known as Escalante, 1.7 million mostly roadless acres, where silence, darkness, and emptiness have no intrusions. With refreshing originality and a haunting rhythm to his prose, Williams reflects on the notion of space and seclusion both internally and externally. Williams also celebrates the landscape: its geology, flora and fauna, its people from the ancient Fremont to its Mormon pioneers, hiking aficionados and recluses such as Everett Ruess, and the controversial politics involved with the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Chris Noble's photographs break down the distinction often felt even in very fine photos, that between the observer and the place. These images pull the reader into the landscape, seamlessly merging the experience and the setting. Part narrative, part poetry, and part meditation, this book charts the quiet places where the human spirit delights in solitude. It reminds us of our intimate connection with the wild and of the landscape's powerful pulse especially when there is nothing to be found.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49609018507537,"sku":"GOR013737042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362373374225,"sku":"CIN0816524580G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816524580.jpg?v=1763483035"},{"product_id":"sweetblood-book-brooke-williams-9780689873249","title":"Sweetblood","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49795461415185,"sku":"CIN0689873247G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50683267907857,"sku":"CIN0689873247VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0689873247.jpg?v=1750783862"},{"product_id":"utah-book-brooke-williams-9781565791169","title":"Utah","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49879155212561,"sku":"CIN1565791169G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50457893404945,"sku":"CIN1565791169VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1565791169.jpg?v=1750894652"},{"product_id":"mary-jane-wild-book-brooke-williams-9781953340207","title":"Mary Jane Wild","description":"Brooke Williams walked twice into southern utah's mary jane wilderness: at the beginning of the trump presidency, perhaps the most tumultuous and destructive in American History, and four-years later at its end. In Mary Jane Wild we follow Brooke as he crosses into this magical place looking for answers to the question, \"What has happened to America?\" He reminds us how wilderness heals and helps us adapt to a world of uncertainty, that evolution continues, and wildness is the force behind it.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50190798160145,"sku":"CIN1953340202G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1953340202.jpg?v=1751414313"},{"product_id":"halflives-book-brooke-williams-9781555662882","title":"Halflives","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50389688713489,"sku":"CIN1555662889VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1555662889.jpg?v=1750926349"},{"product_id":"open-midnight-book-brooke-williams-9781595348036","title":"Open Midnight","description":"Open Midnight weaves two parallel stories about the great wilderness--Brooke Williams's year alone with his dog ground truthing wilderness maps of southern Utah, and that of his great-great-great-grandfather, who in 1863 made his way with a group of Mormons from England across the wilderness almost to Utah, dying a week short. The book is also about two levels of history--personal, as represented by William Williams, and collective, as represented by Charles Darwin, who lived in Shrewsbury, England, at about the same time as Williams.  As Brooke Williams begins researching the story of his oldest known ancestor, he realizes that he has few facts. He wonders if a handful of dates can tell the story of a life, writing, \"If those points were stars in the sky, we would connect them to make a constellation, which is what I've made with his life by creating the parts missing from his story.\" Thus William Williams becomes a kind of spiritual guide, a shamanlike consciousness that accompanies the author on his wilderness and life journeys, and that appears at pivotal points when the author is required to choose a certain course. The mysterious presence of his ancestor inspires the author to create imagined scenes in which Williams meets Darwin in Shrewsbury, sowing something central in the DNA that eventually passes to Brooke Williams, whose life has been devoted to nature and wilderness.  Brooke Williams's inventive and vivid prose pushes boundaries and investigates new ways toward knowledge and experience, inviting readers to think unconventionally about how we experience reality, spirituality, and the wild. The author draws on Jungian psychology to relate how our consciousness of the wild is culturally embedded in our psyche, and how a deep connection to the wild can promote emotional and psychological well-being.  Williams's narrative goes beyond a call for conservation, but in the vein of writers like Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin, David Abram, the author argues passionately for the importance of wildness is to the human soul. Reading Williams's inspired prose provides a measure of hope for protecting the beautiful places that we all need to thrive. Open Midnight is grounded in the present by Williams's descriptions of the Utah lands he explores. He beautifully evokes the feeling of being solitary in the wild, at home in the deepest sense, in the presence of the sublime. In doing so, he conveys what Gary Snyder calls \"a practice of the wild\" more completely than any other work.  Williams also relates an insider's view of negotiations about wilderness protection. As an advocate working for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, he represents a minority in meetings designed to open wilderness lands to roads and hunting. He portrays the mindset of the majority of Utah's citizens, who argue passionately for their rights to use their lands however they wish.  The phrase \"open midnight,\" as Williams sees it, evokes the time between dusk and dawn, between where we've been and where we're going, and the unconscious where all possibilities are hidden.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50764585468177,"sku":"CIN1595348034G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51038254104849,"sku":"NIN9781595348036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423245467921,"sku":"CIN1595348034VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52690079088913,"sku":"NLS9781595348036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1595348034.jpg?v=1751182384"},{"product_id":"mary-jane-wild-book-brooke-williams-9781956368888","title":"Mary Jane Wild","description":"\u003cp\u003eBrooke Williams walked twice into Southern Utah's Mary Jane Wilderness: at the beginning of the Trump presidency, which will be seen as among most tumultuous and destructive in American History, and four-years later at its end. In\u003cem\u003e Mary Jane Wild \u003c\/em\u003eBrooke documents his experience in this magical place, his sense of what happened during the Trump dynasty, why, and its possible long-term effects. 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In the years since, he has delved deeply into the fascinating biology and natural history of dragonflies and made pilgrimages to see them (he now has 38 species on his life list) while also exploring their symbolic meaning and cross-cultural significance.  Encountering Dragonfly is his account—related in a series of odonate encounters—of being drawn into a different kind of relationship with the natural world.  By opening himself to the personal and mytho-poetic meanings of dragonfly, and patiently courting an understanding of these creatures that is built upon, but also transcends, a naturalist’s observation, Brooke has come to believe in the importance of ‘re-enchantment.’  Throughout much of human history, we lived in an enchanted world in which myth and magic, ritual, stories, and spirits informed every aspect of our lives, defining the relationships between psyche, Earth and cosmos. The enchantment ended with the Enlightenment and modernity, when reason and scientific discovery explained away the magic, commencing a commodification of nature that has only intensified ever since.  Brooke’s personal re-enchantment has required of him a faith that material, biological reality isn’t the only reality; it recognizes symbols and archetypes as remnants of a different understanding, which may—as perhaps they always have—play a role in our long-term survival.  In many cultures, the dragonfly carries messages between the inner and outer world. For Brooke Williams the message of the dragonfly is to ask questions about synchronicity, awe and the collective unconscious, and how to engage with a world increasingly out of balance. What are the implications of following a path toward greater enchantment? In a time where the stakes have never been higher, nor the political and biological imperatives of climate change and environmental degradation more urgent, can we afford to choose such a path? Perhaps more to the point, can we afford not to?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51629650706705,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51629650837777,"sku":"NGR9781943370290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51629650936081,"sku":"NIN9781943370290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52094584848657,"sku":"CIN194337029XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52661110669585,"sku":"NLS9781943370290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53381519212817,"sku":"CIN194337029XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/194337029X.jpg?v=1751442735"},{"product_id":"halvlives-reconciling-work-and-wildness-book-brooke-williams-9781559635776","title":"HALVLIVES RECONCILING WORK AND WILDNESS","description":"The author reflects on his life balancing the expectations of his family and society and his need to escape and experience nature and the wilderness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51767292985617,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51767293018385,"sku":"CIN1559635770VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51804071362833,"sku":"CIN1559635770G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781559635776.jpg?v=1751429698"},{"product_id":"beyond-the-bars-book-brooke-williams-9781304595614","title":"Beyond the Bars","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53498219168017,"sku":"NIN9781304595614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781304595614.jpg?v=1777944121"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-brooke-williams.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}