Dreams can change our lives. Just ask Brooke Williams, writer and walker. He’s on a Colorado mountain town tour with his newest book, one that began with a dream. He’ll be in conversation with Craig Childs on July 16 about the book, titled, “Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-enchantment,” at Wilkinson Public Library.
“Encountering Dragonfly” is the result of a long-ago dream about a particular dragonfly, a two-decade obsession with the order of Odonata, or dragonflies, and his own journey of re-enchantment that keeps him alive and writing, walking and having crucial conversations about the natural world, humans, and how all beings can thrive.
“Re-enchantment is a real strategy for what needs to happen in the world,” said Williams in a recent interview with the Planet. “It’s not that hard; it’s really a shift in a point of view. I hope this book is a guide to what it means, how we do this simple shift.”
Williams is the first to say, in the author’s note, that the book is not a field guide to the world of dragonflies.
“This book is my attempt to make sense of my own experience, which may be important only insofar as it supports theories of other possible dimensions of life, the understanding of which may contribute to our evolutionary success.”
He does, however, include scientific observations in the style of a naturalist, drawing readers into the world and all its inhabitants.
Williams explains that the book is not scientific per se. Yet, a conversation with him will leave one thinking and feeling that existing as a human means we all are naturalists and scientists as well as enchanted beings and dreamers.
“We’ve lived enchanted lives for most of human history, and then the natural world became an object to be bought and sold,” Williams said. “Yet, we live in the same bodies we’ve been in since the pleistocene.”
Remembering a lecture he heard at Harvard years ago, he added, “The world has never been disenchanted; we just started looking at it differently.”
Williams’ whole journey started with a dream about a dragonfly carved in a stone. And then he started seeing them everywhere.
“Over the next two decades, I would have dozens of significant encounters with dragonflies, my messengers,” he wrote after relaying the dream in “Encountering Dragonfly.”
Some time after the dream happened, Williams experienced a life-threatening event. When he came away from it, the doctor asked, “Why are you not dead? You should be dead.”
“I thought about that,” Williams said. “The question really started to grow in me. At one point, I realized that possibly, I was re-enchanted by that dream and my job was to re-enchant the world.”
Williams is taking the book — and himself — on tour in little mountain towns in Colorado this month to do just that, inviting conversation about enchantment, the natural world and us with community specialists and audiences.
“This book is timely and important for us,” said Michael Weaver, the book’s publisher at Uphill Press. “A lot of people are taking refuge in the natural world, partly because it feels threatened and partly because everywhere else is such a mess.”
“Encountering Dragonfly” is sort of a new direction for Weaver. He’s mostly published titles that are about movement and health, but being a walker, Williams fits right in and helps the press expand its offerings.
“We’ve been wanting to branch out,” said Weaver, who started Uphill Books more than a decade ago. “We want to publish books that illustrate movement in the broadest possible sense.”
The connection is with Williams’ practice of walking, of moving in the natural world. His most recent book before “Dragonfly” was “Mary Jane Wild: Two Walks and a Rant,” which was written during and between two wilderness treks in Utah that bracketed the previous Trump administration.
Dragonflies fit right in, too: they are all about motion, and they’re old.
“Dragonflies have been around much longer than us,” Weaver said. “There’s the notion that connection with them brings us to the subconscious, to myth. They travel between worlds, carry the spirits of the dead. … Brooke is the point of that spear currently, sharing what dragonflies might mean if we open our minds to that possibility.”
Weaver was on the recent Pacific Northwest book tour with Williams.
“It was fascinating to see the conversations that emerged, and the audience got involved and told stories of their relationships with dragonflies,” Weaver said.
“This little mountain tour in Colorado will be sweet,” he added. “Brooke is interested in a conversation about the re-enchantment of the natural world.”
Those conversations will be with key community members. The Telluride event on July 16 may be the most salient and deep for locals and visitors alike. Williams will be in conversation with San Miguel County writer and naturalist Craig Childs, who is also on tour with his newest book, “The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light” (Torrey House Press, 2025).
Childs’ book is also about enchantment, and Williams looks forward to their conversation.
“It’s going to be fun,” Williams predicted. “One thing everyone agrees upon is the love of the night sky. Is there anything more enchanting than being enveloped in the stars?”
Childs is also looking forward to the conversation. The two writers have known each other for some time and Williams has written blurbs for a few of Childs’ books.
Childs said he’ll be reading excerpts from “Encountering Dragonfly” to the audience.
“I’m looking forward to putting my voice to Brooke’s words,” Childs said.
“We’re both naturalists, in that we put energy into paying attention to the natural world,” he added. “That said, most people are naturalists, and Brooke’s book is about that practice. That is an important word, because paying attention does take practice.”
“We’re completely surrounded by quick dopamine responses, flashing lights,” Childs continued. “It takes effort to engage with nature and take in the flash of light off a dragonfly wing.”
In “Encountering Dragonfly,” Williams writes in the chapter titled Cherry-Faced Meadowlark, Castle Valley, Utah:
I’ve always loved the wild world. From a distance, many who know me might believe that my passion for nature is another’s for golf or the New England Patriots. For me it’s so much more: My purest beliefs and identity are rooted in the natural world. It is the foundation of my spiritual existence. …
I believe that we save the wilderness because it saves us. If our evolutionary success has depended on wild landscapes and wild creatures and processes, why wouldn’t protecting wildness now be a factor in a successful human future?
For more information on the book, the mountain town tour and on Williams, who has spent the last 40 years advocating for wilderness and has served on the board of multiple environmental organizations, visit brookewilliams.site and uphill-books.com.
The mountain town tour dates are: July 11 at Lithic Books, Fruita, with Art Goodtimes; July 12 at Explore Booksellers, Aspen, with Laura Catto; July 14 at Paonia Books, Paonia, with Florence Williams; July 15 at Townie Books, Crested Butte, with Shelley Reed; July 16 at Wilkinson Library, Telluride, with Craig Childs; and July 17 at Maria’s Bookshop, Durango, with Nancy Stoffer.
The Wilkinson event begins at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 16.