Radical Intimacy with the Imaginal World of Nature

As an amateur naturalist, Brooke Williams is constantly awed by his encounters with the wild world. Since a life-altering dream about a dragonfly, the blending of the worlds of mythology and psychology hold him with equal footing with the biological world. After the dream the dragonfly would not be contained to his sleeping world, it invaded his waking life as well causing him to contemplate the re-enchantment of our world, to rediscover wonder, mystery, and meaning in our relationship with nature and the environment. What is the wisdom being laid before us by the creatures that reside alongside us, creatures like ravens, coyotes, bees, and dragonflies?In this 2025 interview with Justine Willis Toms, Williams explores dragonflies as both literal creatures and symbolic guides. He invites us to consider new perspectives on nature, consciousness, and the practice of re-enchantment in our modern world.Brooke Williams is a naturalist and environmental writer who covers subjects such as evolution, consciousness, and his own ventures exploring both the inner and outer wilderness. He advocates for the preservation of wilderness. His writings also take us with him on his many treks into the deserts of Utah, where he lives with his wife and partner, the writer and New Dimensions guest Terry Tempest Williams. He is the author of several books including:· Half-Lives: Reconciling Work and Wildness (Johnson Books 1999)· Escalante: The Best Kind of Nothing (photos by Chris Noble) (University of Arizona Press 2006)· Open Midnight: Where Ancestors and Wilderness Meet (Trinity University Press 2017· Mary Jane Wild: Two Walks & A Rant (Homebound Publications 2021) · Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-Enchantment (Uphill Books 2025)