We Don't Know What We've Already Lost

One of the great joys of visiting friends and family, in addition to the usual catching up, rekindling of the relationship, meeting the children,  I have become the recipient of good books recently read.  What’s more, I get to pass these on to others when I’ve finished.  Over the last year, I’ve been a bit of a traveling library reading everything from heavy historical non-fiction about the Comanche to Game of Thrones – still not sure if I should thank my sister for introducing that magic 8 ball of addiction.  I am grateful for their “pass it on” books  --  not only for the good read, but also because reading a friend’s book narrows the space between you, like the way an old mix tape brings up memories of the person who made it for you. 

We spent a week volunteering on a BLM Ranger Patrol of the Green River’s Desolation and Gray Canyons with a former student of mine, Ryan Hygon.   He introduced me to Edward Abbey, through the loan of Desert Solitaire.  This book captures much of the Utah red rock landscape and raises questions as pertinent today as when he asked them in 1968 three years before I was born.

Last night I finished the chapter, “Down the River” where Abbey chronicles his trip down Glen Canyon on the Colorado River, shortly before the dam was completed, shortly before this river became Lake Powell.  He and a friend, spend a week floating down the Colorado on what was likely one of the last trips on the river as nature made it.   Back in March 2013, Shari and I spent a week on Lake Powell with our friends Kate and Alex and got to see this area from a slightly more elevated position.  We could only speculate on the differing perspectives that 40 years and some 400 vertical feet of water could provide. 

More poignant than Abbey’s description of traveling the river -- the rhythms and routines established, the loss of any sense of time / day of week, and connection with the wild on its terms -- is his sense of grief over this canyon’s fate to which he cannot quite give voice.  As they float past side canyons and temples of sandstone two thousand feet above them, their thoughts never stray far from the inevitable, that this narrow path of water cutting its channel through millions of years of sandstone will soon be buried in silt, mud, sand, and water.  They prefer to focus on the present and give the river bank, side canyons, and rapids their full attention -- to experience it as is.  Who could blame them?  For what good could possibly come of dwelling in despair of the inevitable? 

Abbey’s love poem for the canyon leaves me with an aching sense of loss.  He mourns not only for the ancient cliff dwellings, the petroglyphs carefully tapped onto mural walls, the side canyons with their labyrinthine holes carved over millennia through the soft Navajo sandstone, the “Music Temple” named so by Powell’s 1869 expedition for its acoustical mysteries, but also mourns the loss of true wilderness where access is hard won through footsteps over dry stone or a week’s travel by paddle boat from the nearest road.  He asks, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare, said a wise man.  If so, what happens to excellence when we remove the difficulty and the rarity?”  This remains the quintessential Abbey question, what are we losing in our quest to develop the world, to remove obstacles in order to gain the benefits of that development, to build the economy?  His answer is clear, and with tongue in cheek would say that we’ve got a great world going here, except for all these damn humans.  However, his judgment remains slightly more complex.  He needs human company as much as anyone despite seeking such solitude in the Utah desert;  but, Abbey would be quick to remind us that humans remain the only animal to operate a bulldozer.   

Lake Powell, so named in honor of the first European/American expedition to travel the length of the Green and Colorado Rivers, remains a beautiful place despite the changes brought by the dam.  During our six days on the waterway in sea kayaks, we explored only a relatively small area north of Hall’s Crossing.  At this time of year, the houseboats / party barges remain dormant in the harbors and our only companions were the occasional fisherman who buzzed the main channel at 7:30 am each morning – just after the boat launches open.   

We explore the area with two main intentions.  First, Alex wanted to scout a location to return the following spring break with students from University of Arizona in Tucson, where he is the director of Outdoor Programs.  Second, there are precious few areas to expedition kayak in the southwest and this is a classic.  Going off of somewhat archaic notes Alex had from a graduate student scouting trip a few years earlier (as well as Kelsey’s Boater Guide), we paddle into Moqui Canyon, our first side-canyon exploration. 

The experience of entering this canyon becomes familiar throughout the week, as we explore each in turn, but never grows routine.  As we approach a new side-canyon the vast walls close in and bring the open expanse of the main channel sharply into contrast, and ratchet up the wow factor.  The distinct personality of each area only reveals itself after taking the first turn, then the next and the one after that.  These winding passages tease us to go further in, to experience it, to see it as if no other person has been there before.  

Because the canyon is back filled to pool-like stillness by the dam we have for a moment paused with this water on its journey toward the Sea of Cortez – a journey which it no longer completes.  We pause too, as if entering a Gothic cathedral from the brightness of day, hushed to a reverent silence waiting for our eyes to adjust, and take it all in.  The creator here cannot be measured in generations of stone-mason, but only on a geological scale – one which frustrates the human mind in contemplation.  I break the silence of this church checking out the acoustics, singing the only opera I know -- the reverb, not bad.  

The walls rise abruptly out of the water, as if created whole rather than by the powers of erosion.  The smooth sandstone flows together in layers of rose, buff, mahogany, and cream.   Abbey’s description of melting ice cream – Neapolitan ice cream, captures this in a way that sets well with me, and makes me wish I’d thought of it.  The soft focus, the blurred edges of transition, the smooth roundness give a sensual, almost culinary, appeal to the narrowing walls, especially around sunset – now fast approaching. 
 

We round corners that lend perspective to the depth of the water, at times I can see the rock extending below the surface a few yards exposing the habitat of fish, at others the rock simply disappears in to an obsidian abyss.   Where does it end?  This dark, still and deep water provides a mirror-like surface which begs the question, “which end it up?”  
We wind our way up to a natural split in the canyon, choose the left channel, and find our first dead end.  The waters here reveal the bones of cotton-wood trees pickled during their long, cold drink, exposed by the drought conditions now endemic to the southwest.  I give in to the temptation to slalom the long kayak in between these old stands slowly going to rot, dodging limbs, tangled fishing lures and other debris.

We backtrack a short way until we see the a gentle slope to what looks like a flat-ish space under a giant over hanging roof of stone, as good place to stop as any.  We set camp, make dinner and eat while we take in the last light of the day dancing on the walls above.  Our camp is directly across the water from a large cave; and if the sun rises where we think, it will be worth checking out in the morning.

We spend our days exploring where the serpentine side canyons lead us.  We look for suitable camping places as much for ourselves as for the group which will come next spring.  We follow the ever narrowing ribbons of water until the water ends and the sand and mud begins.  We pull ourselves and our boats out as best we can and find a way up the twisting bends through shoe­-swallowing mud searching for Ancient Puebloan ruins, sinkholes, slot canyons, or simply needing an excuse to get out of the boat and stretch the legs. 

On one day we say enough of this nonsense, sitting on our rear ends while traveling around the canyon, and decide to hike up and out of this watery world to see what things look like from on top.  We scramble up the Slickrock, so named not for the gripping rubber shoes we now wear, but for the trouble given to horses and the cowboys that rode them.  Rubber seems to work just fine and we make it up some steep terrain, that upon first blush, I thought would give us some trouble.  We work our way up by winding back and forth, not really following any trail except for what seems to make the most sense.   At the top we’re rewarded with some stunning views of the Henry Mountains, still showing last week’s snow, the emerald lake below, and the delicious lunch we packed earlier.  

We discuss things.  We drink cheap wine from plastic bags and good coffee in favorite mugs.  We wake in the morning to giggles of laughter from our friends.  We one up each other with our back country cooking skills and one burner meals.  We fall silent and paddle off alone for short moments lost in our personal thoughts.  We wave to the other visitors of this area, those few fishermen who have skipped out mid-week to spend a few hours trolling their favorite spots in the lake for fish.  We take pictures, make notes, tell stories, and allow the rhythms of the day to guide our actions.  We develop our own standards for the week and revel in what becomes the new normal.  By Friday, I am loath to paddle back to the boat launch to pull the kayak out of the water, wishing that we could instead simply resupply our food and keep on going to see what is around the next corner.

We spent this week enjoying a different kind of Glen Canyon than the one Abbey visited all those years ago.  We pause along with the water as it pauses on its natural journey.  Our rhythms are not dictated by flow, gradient, and rapid; instead we are forced into action by wind, chilly morning temperatures, and the length of daylight.   

There remains a conflict here for me.  I know that where I am and what I’m seeing is as a result of human intervention into natural processes.  I know that there is a river bed below all this water with the natural rock channel filled with mud and sand.  But what is left here is still stunningly,
starkly beautiful to behold and still challenging to explore, at least in the manner we’ve chosen. 

I know I would feel differently about my experience in Glen Canyon if it were party boat season.  Just seeing the sheer number of house boats bobbing in the harbor in Hall’s Crossing is staggering, but to consider the others waiting in all the other marinas throughout the lake is too much to bear.  One of the great joys of wilderness travel is the chance to be alone, but with even half of these boats underway, we would have to run such a gauntlet of traffic as to send away a good share of the magic of the place – not in what we see but in how we experience it.  It is a different place than when Abbey paddled here, different and easier to access, more difficult to see the plan nature had intended.  

As a result of taking in Abbey’s before the dam portrait and comparing it with my own experiences, I am left thinking a number of things.  If I had read this chapter before dipping my paddle into Glen Canyon waters, I am sure that I would still have been captured by Abbey’s storytelling, his sense of awe, his humor, and probably would have agreed with his conclusions.  I would have had the luxury of only his side of the story, a convincing one at that.  I probably would have thought the lake was a terrible way to treat a good river, shrugged and forgotten about it.  But, if I had only visited Lake Powell as it is today without the benefit of another man’s nostalgia, I might have been convinced of the lake’s necessity.  I could have bought the whole dam story, its water recovery, its flood control, its opportunity for recreation, and so forth.  I would have been too captured by its current beauty to really ponder the possibility of what the river looked like in its pre-dam state.  And, if I had to navigate the lake surrounded by house boat heaven, I would have thought, “Get me the hell out of here!”

The complexity here is the same when humans alter the landscape on such a grand scale.  While we can quantify the benefits in kilowatt hours, we are left with colossal consequences of a fundamentally altered environment.  No matter our intentions, these actions simply cannot be undone.  In the middle 50 years of the last century our government and society was on a dam building mission across this continent.  That was “progress” and of course there was money to be made.  This same story is being played out in developing nations today.  Indigenous people and their land are being swept aside for the sake of progress.   While we may be able to justify what is gained as a result of this effort, just as I could see the beauty of Lake Powell, it is impossible for us to know what is lost once it’s gone. 

Abbey concludes; “The new dam, of course, will improve things. If ever filled it will back water to within sight of the bridge (Rainbow Bridge), transforming what was formerly an adventure to a routine motorboat excursion. Those who see it then will not understand that half the beauty of Rainbow Bridge lay in its remoteness.”  I am left pondering my own understanding there, and grateful that I have experienced it through Abbey’s eyes as well as my own. 

No matter where you go, get out there (and out of your car) while there is still something to see…