Terry Tempest Williams speaks at Dartmouth on January 25. Photograph courtesy of the Dartmouth ENVS Department.

She had the impact of a car wreck, charging the moment with reality and stillness, grabbing us from the forward-moving current of life and turning us back on ourselves. She spoke with raw poetic beauty. And her words changed the outlook of at least one busy Dartmouth college student.

I almost didn’t go to Terry Tempest Williams’ January 25th lecture because I had work to do. Because it was raining and cold, and I was without an umbrella. Because it was in Cook Auditorium, which is far off my beaten path—the usual dorm-class-Collis-library route. Nevertheless, for the always compelling sake of procrastination and the hope that I would gain something—anything—from the lecture, I made my way through the pouring rain for Terry Tempest Williams.

With the recent budget crisis, along with the resulting movement of faculty and students to support staff in the face of lay-offs, there has lately been an adamant questioning of the “Dartmouth Experience” and its values. Williams did not speak about the budget crisis, but she did address values—ones we hold that become evident in our daily lives, our writing, and our voices.

Though crammed into an audience of 300 plus people, I felt like I was in an intimate conversation with Williams throughout her lecture. A semi-challenged, awkward writer myself who is still in her formative stages, I connected with Williams’ thoughts on the process of writing and what writing means to her, an author, environmentalist, and current Montgomery Fellow and professor at Dartmouth.

Williams dealt at length with the relationship between her work and sense of self, telling her audience that “there is no separation from the writing life and the life engaged, and it has everything to do with love.” An engaged life, according to Williams, is one that is aware—“awake, alert, and alive wherever we are.” Williams commented on the importance of finding one’s voice, an inherent, unique truth that each possesses, and how this voice is essential in delivering justice to those who are voiceless. Drawing on the phraseology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she argued that “maladjusted men and women” are necessary in today’s world to be aware, to use their voices in both speech and writing, and to fight against the social and environmental injustices that envelop today’s world. Her points echoed the well-known aphorism of John Sloan Dickey: “The world’s troubles are your troubles.”

Terry Tempest William’s words have particular resonance at Dartmouth, where it’s easy to get caught up in a hyper-competitive environment in which each perpetually fights the other for that elusive citation, for that sought-after FSP, or for those scarce jobs offered during corporate recruiting. We are achievement-driven students. After all, we go to Dartmouth, where achievement is expected and institutionalized. We play hard on Webster Avenue, study hard in the 1902 room, and work hard in the endless stream of meetings, practices, lunch dates, and face time. Yet as Williams might have asked: Are we aware? Are we living our lives with purpose? Did we lose ourselves somewhere along the way?

Williams spoke, here, to the importance of mentally and emotionally “checking-in.” We come to a point in our day-to-day lives at which we need to, and we must, reassess where we are, where’ve come from, and where we’re going. As she put it, “if you know where we are, we know who we are.”

So, while Williams’ lecture may not have been a commentary on the Dartmouth lifestyle, what I left her lecture with was. Too often we find ourselves rushing from one place to the next, one day to the next. And before we realize it, we’re in the middle of winter term, suddenly aware of how much has happened and how little we’ve taken note of.