CASTLE VALLEY — Terry Tempest Williams published the 2026 book 'The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary,' which describes desert encounters she interprets as moments of grace. In the book, Williams defines a Glorian as an encounter, a meeting with élan vital, and a moment of grace.
Williams, who lives in Castle Valley, recounts a detailed observation from the Red Rock Desert in which she watched an ant carry a coyote willow blossom across a stone patio and desert terrain toward its colony. She described how, when wind threatened to topple the ant, pairs of other ants appeared to steady it before vanishing. As the ant crossed cracks between stones, additional ants ferried it across and disappeared. Near prickly pear cacti, three ants lifted the blossom over spines and then withdrew from sight.
These observations emerged from walks Williams took at night during the pandemic, when daytime temperatures became unbearable. "It really was out of necessity, because during the pandemic in the summer it was so hot. I think we had 52 days of blistering heat; it got as high as 116 F, and you can't walk during the day when it's that hot," Williams said.
Her nocturnal desert experiences led to new perceptions of the landscape. "What I learned is that our eyes adapt to darkness, especially in the light of a full moon, and the red rocks become blue. You see the eye shine of deer. If you’re lucky enough, you see the eye shine of a coyote—red—and the eye shine of a jackrabbit that is red like flames," Williams said.