Special Episode: ‘An Obituary for the Land’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Nothing comes easily out here,” Terry Tempest Williams, a Utah-based writer, said of the American West. Her family was once almost taken by fire, and as a child of the West, she grew up with it. Our producer Bianca Giaever, who was working out of the West Coast when the wildfires started, woke up one day amid the smoke with the phrase “an obituary to the land” in her head. She called on Ms. Williams, a friend, to write one. “I will never write your obituary,” her poem reads. “Because even as you burn, you throw down seeds that will sprout and flower.” Guest: Bianca Giaever, a producer for The New York Times, speaks to the writer Terry Tempest Williams. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi.
0:07.0	Hello.
0:09.0	How are you?
0:16.0	I'm good. How are you?
0:19.0	I'm just so happy to hear your voice.
0:23.0	Hi. I'm Bianca Gavre.
0:25.0	I'm an audio producer here on the Daily.
0:29.0	Oh my god. Oh my god. What are you seeing?
0:32.0	Well right now I'm just...
0:34.0	There's no windows around me, but I haven't seen the sky in like a week.
0:38.0	And I happen to be working from the west coast when the fires started.
0:43.0	It's like a haze. I've never experienced anything like it.
0:46.0	Yeah.
0:47.0	What do you see?
0:48.0	And to be honest, I was feeling a lot of anxiety.
0:52.0	In fact last night was the first time we've seen the stars.
0:55.0	It's a very claustrophobic feeling, not being able to see the sky.
1:01.0	And the other day I woke up in the smoke
1:04.0	and this phrase popped into my head,
1:07.0	an obituary for the land.
1:10.0	And then I just immediately wrote to you.
1:12.0	So the subject was checking in.
	...

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