“There is nothing out there.” Such is the claim, at least, of politicians and oil company executives, amazed that anyone would fight to protect the miles of plateaus and canyon bottoms that stretch across southern Utah. Even tourists see this region as an empty spot on the map—an excuse to drive directly from Capitol Reef to Arches National Park. But it is precisely this—nothing—that writer Brooke Williams and photographer Chris Noble find captivating about Escalante. In this thoughtful and exquisitely illustrated rumination, the authors tour the network of chasms and gorges that began forming millions of years ago on the Colorado Plateau and today constitute a desert paradise of mesas, buttes, and boundless solitude. 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.

Escalante: The Best Kind of Nothing (Desert Places)

History

Williams, Brooke

Americas

University of Arizona Press

It is Jay Bartlett's first day as an ambulance driver. Instead of simply delivering his patient to the hospital safely, he hits a pedestrian as they arrive. The victim, Jordan James, is just arriving at the hospital to tend to her husband, who has had a heart attack. Instead of keeping vigil by his side, she is thrown into a coma and her own medical emergency. In his guilt, Jay drops his own life and stays with Jordan. Their lives soon become intertwined both in the present as well as in the past as a story of love over time unfolds.

Someone Always Loved You

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

lulu.com

Renee Lockhart has her eye on a lofty goal…to fill the open position of morning radio show host at the station where she works. When her co-workers sign her up for a local TV version of The Bachelor, Renee goes along with it in order to raise her profile.   Upon seeing her bumbling audition, Ben McConnell, one of the most eligible bachelors in town, insists that Renee be placed on the show. But Ben gets much more than he expected in Renee… he gets a girl who can’t seem to do anything right…and a girl he can’t seem to resist.

Accept This Dandelion

Romance

Romantic Comedy

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

His first day on the job, ambulance driver Jay has a horrible accident. The victim of the crash is thrown into a coma and Jay keeps vigil by her side. As their lives, past and present intertwine; a story of love through time unfolds. An intricate drama including adoption, love, suspense, and plenty of questions, Someone Always Loved You is a novel that keeps the mind churning and the soul alive.

After the Final Dandelion (The Dandelion Series)

Used. Very Good conditions. May have soft reading marks and name of the previous owner.

Halflives: Reconciling Work and Wildness

Self-Help

Personal Transformation

Johnson+books

As a member of a prominent Salt Lake City family and a direct descendant of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, Brooke Williams was born into a carefully scripted life. He would study hard, be involved with his church and community, and follow in the footsteps of three previous generations to work in the family plumbing-supply business. And that is what he did.Yet despite his business success, Williams was not satisfied. His deep and abiding love of the outdoors and insatiable desire to experience wild nature made living the life that was expected of him an ongoing struggle. He found himself escaping at every opportunity into wildness, deliberately seeking risky ski routes and long, lonely runs. He realized he was drowning emotionally, unable to bring his "halflives" together, and growing increasingly miserable as the gap between his two worlds expanded. In Halflives, Brooke Williams presents the engrossing story of his personal journey in balancing the expectations of family and society, and the needs and desires of his heart. In witty, poignant prose, he tells how he came to free himself from the life he was expected to live. Williams comes to realize he is not alone in this struggle, and he identifies a balance we all must strike between our cultural obligations and the strong pull toward wildness that our evolutionary heritage exerts on the human psyche. As he says, "If we survive as a species, it will have nothing to do with what we've invented, developed or manufactured, but everything to do with what we know in our deep cores about being good mammals. Like grizzly bears, slime molds, mosquitoes, and hawks, we have not been genetically manipulated, and we are still wild creatures. We need to act more that way.

Halflives: Reconciling Work And Wildness

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Island Press

Magnificent large collection of Till's great color photos. The small text is by Brooke Williams. Most pictures were made in the S.E. quarter of Utah, the slickrock plateaux and canyons: the formations unique to the state. Much of this is land over which the development faction is fighting with the conservationist. This is a strong testimony for the latter. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Utah, a Centennial Celebration

Arts & Photography

Till, Tom

Photography & Video

Westcliffe Pub

Open Midnight weaves two parallel stories about the great wildernessBrooke 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 historypersonal, 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.

Open Midnight: Where Ancestors and Wilderness Meet

Trinity University Press

Insulin Resistance Diet: 2 Books in 1 Insulin Resistance Cookbook & PCOS Diet. Your All-In-One Guide to manage the Insulin Resistance and Eliminate PCOS Symptoms

Adams, Rebeca

Independently published

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Williams, Brooke. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Williams, Brooke