Brooke Williams - Open Midnight: Where Ancestors and Wilderness Meet

PRAISE FOR Open Midnight

Brooke Williams is one of southern Utahs most powerful defenders. Open Midnight is a great and honest account of his vital work, with a little bit of the ghosts of Darwin thrown in for good measure. My gratitude to him and his voice in the West, during a time of great turbulencethen as now.

Rick Bass

In these artfully engaging pages, Brooke Williams opens wide the hidden, midnight door between the mysteries of wild landscapes and the depths of the human psyche and gracefully ushers us across the threshold into the numinousa lost portal the world urgently needs in these dark and arduous times. With ample humor and humility, he weaves a latter-day version of the worlds oldest story, of life bestowed from each generation to the future, from one species to the next, and from the dead to the living, and does so while deftly blending multiple genresmemoir, fiction, philosophy, evolutionary science, nature mysticism, and wilderness advocacy. A formidable feat! Williams demonstrates that real wilderness is where the inner wild meets the outerand that the bridge between them may be the salvation of our species.

Bill Plotkin, author of Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

Brooke Williams, wilderness advocate, conscience of the Earth, writes clearly and firmly wherever he goes. From Dead Horse Point to the Muse dOrsay, you will find no better guide to connect the natural and the human.

David Rothenberg, author of Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution

Published by Trinity University Press

San Antonio, Texas 78212

Copyright 2017 by Brooke Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design by Rebecca Lown

Book design by BookMatters

Cover art: Head of Sinbad Galaxy, by Bret Webster

Page 64: Ledger from the Cynosure, British Mission Emigration Register, pages 333 and 329.

Pages 13031: Fernand Cormon, Cain [PD-US], via Wikimedia Commons.

Page 188: I think from Charles Darwins Journals, Darwins Notebook B, 1837. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

ISBN 978-1-59534-804-3 ebook

Trinity University Press strives to produce its books using methods and materials in an environmentally sensitive manner. We favor working with manufacturers that practice sustainable management of all natural resources, produce paper using recycled stock, and manage forests with the best possible practices for people, biodiversity, and sustainability. The press is a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit program dedicated to supporting publishers in their efforts to reduce their impacts on endangered forests, climate change, and forest-dependent communities.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 39.481992.

CIP data on file at the Library of Congress

21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1

For Terry

The only stories I need,

of grace and love and truth and wild beauty,

you told me.

And Rio

(20012015)

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

from A Dog Has Died, by Pablo Neruda

Table of Contents

Contents

The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.

Clarissa Pinkola Ests

There is a ghost in this story. His name is William Williams, who is a real person. Very little is known about him. What is known about him comes through Mormon Church records: his familys transatlantic voyage aboard the Cynosure; as a member of the Rosel Hyde Company migrating across America; his unpaid loan from the Mormon Perpetual Emigration Fund; the personal history his youngest son wrote decades after his death. Based on this information, I am sure about these details of his life:

The day he was born in Shrewsbury, England

The birthdays of family members

That, professionally, William was a joiner in the making of furniture

The days different members of his family were baptized into the Mormon Church

That he and his wife borrowed from the Mormon Perpetual Emigration Fund

The day he left Liverpool, England, for America with his wife, Mary, and youngest son, John George

The day he died at Three Crossings of the Sweetwater, Wyoming

There were icebergs

Can a handful of dates tell the story of a life? In my mind these days are points along a line that, in this case, spans the fifty-five years lived by William Williams. The first things I see are the spaces between those points. If those points were stars in the sky, we would connect them to make constellations, which is what Ive made with his life by creating the parts missing from his story. Whenever Ive done this, Ive been as true to the trajectory formed by the actual points, the real dates. While Im not sure that what Ive written into his life happened, Im not sure that it didnt. It all could have happened. When Ive woven his story together with that of Charles Darwin, Ive been true to elements of Darwins story, which is much better known.

Which brings me to this: I had help filling in the space between dots, completing the constellation. As I now believe to be true of all our dead, William Williams is out there in some other, perhaps quantum dimension, where hes found ways to influence me but only when Ive been filled with enough wonder. Hes been there when I made decisions that didnt make sense until much later. There have been times Ive heard ideas, statements, possibilities come out of my mouth that I didnt understand, only to have them turn out to be true. Or when something unusual attracted my attention, which then took on archetypal meaning.