A Canyon Saved, A Canyon Drowned
It would be easy of us to simply tell stories of exploring beautiful places, and skip the hard, uncomfortable truths that come with spending a year in nature in our rapidly warming world. For us though, the lessons we learn about our environment and our history as a country are just as important to tell.
We walked the Red Canyon overlook trail in the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area Tuesday morning. The trail winds through Ponderosa Pine and Rocky Mountain Junipers and looks out across a canyon at 770 million year old rock formations. It was truly beautiful, and then I noticed the oil slicks on the water and heard the whine of the motorboats below bouncing off of the canyon walls. As I stood there, I wondered what it looked like before the Flaming Gorge Dam flooded this ancient canyon.
I had excellent reason to wonder as several days earlier we stood atop the Harper’s Corner overlook in Dinosaur NM and looked across the spectacular convergence of the Yampa River Canyon and the Green River Canyon. A Golden Eagle soared overhead and we could hear the rapids 2500ft below. It was a magical place, but it was almost lost. In the 1950’s, a dam had been planned that would have flooded the Yampa Canyon, but David Brower and Wallace Stegner fought to preserve these two canyons and their rich archeologic history. They won and the dam was built 70 miles farther upstream on the Green River at Flaming Gorge. Today the Yampa remains the last wild river in the entire Colorado River system.
As we’ve entered our fifth year of drought in California, there has been talk of new dams, yet in standing in these two places, one saved and one not, I thought it important to share what is lost, the beauty, the history, the archeologic and geologic record and the biodiversity.
Glen Canyon, Hetch Hetchy, and Flaming Gorge took millions of years to become the places that we know and see today, and each housed countless fossils and Native American artifacts before the dams were constructed. They were beautiful wild places. In our lifetimes, even if those dams were removed, the land and the landscape can’t be returned to what they were.
The West has always been an arid place, and is prone to droughts that last not just years, but centuries. We shouldn’t have to lose more wild places so LA and Phoenix can have grassy lawns and so we can grow rice and almonds in the desert. As a society we must be more mindful of our own consumption, as well as the ramifications of our waste, and our need to “beautify” arid places with green grass.
For us, living in the Minnie has caused a dramatic shift in our water consumption. We were never huge consumers, but now we are much more aware of how much water we use because we haul our water for drinking and dishes in 5 gallon jugs from communal faucets as we try to preserve the water in our tank for flushing the toilet! We are never guaranteed water when we stop, so though we are staying hydrated, we are also using less and less.
Living in balance with our natural resources is an ongoing challenge for each and every one of us. Do I ride my bike to work, even though it may take longer? Can I afford a hybrid or electric vehicle? How can I decrease my water consumption? Should I buy my fruits and vegetables at a grocery store or at a farmer’s market, perhaps saving an immense amount in carbon emissions in the transport process? These are hard questions to answer, and there are so many more to consider. Right now, we hope that in some way, the solar panels we have on top of the Minnie help to offset the amount of gas this gal consumes, because it’s a lot. None of us are perfect, and we can all do better.
We leave you tonight from the Wind River Mountains in Lander, Wyoming, one of the most beautiful and wild ranges in the world!