And I begin to tell about a place of beauty now lost to us. We motored 13 miles up the Colorado from Lee's Ferry, a historic location - Powell and his surveying groups used it, as did Mormon settlers, trappers, and explorers. That 13 miles is all that is left of Glen Canyon.
I had two day trips in the canyon, fishing and doing a float raft trip, enabled by the tourism's "seasonal professionals" (guides). How I longed to be in a kayak alone on that poignantly beautiful ribbon of river.
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| Our guide, TJ, displays one of our catches |
Further protected by baitless fishing regulations, the area becomes an angler's idyll. Fish were easily visible, and the scenery perhaps the most beautiful in any fishery we'd ever tried. With jigging, lures, Carolina rigs, mice tails, glow-bugs and our guide TJ's expertise, we each caught about 20 trout, within a 12-18 inch range.
Best, they easily released with barbless hooks and flitted off with amazing speed after releasing them. I think I catch them just so I can behold their iridescent beauty, like no other fresh-water fish in nature.
Glen Canyon Dam was dedicated in 1966, and the new Lake Powell (named after John Wesley Powell) was full by 1980. The dam is the second largest in the U.S., and was intended as a crucial part of western energy and water infrastructure.
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| Glen Canyon before the dam, Web photo |
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| Glen Canyon dam (note the level of water release - none) |
In retrospect, it was another monument of the
"Engineer Period" in economic growth. Americans' mechanical/motor expertise harnessed the land and climate, all in service to human comfort through consumer solutions.
During the period in which Glen Canyon Dam was proposed and built, a familiar dialogue between Progress and Entropy ensued, which ended with no surprises. The dam was built, and now it's mostly useless except as a silt trap for Lake Mead. Churlishly, I admit that Lake Powell provides lots of tourism opportunities, too, more than the canyon did - more access to "nature", than did Glen Canyon.
We could build it, and so we did, and history records another narrative of unforeseen consequences and poignant regret.
Lake Powell is 186 miles long; Glen Canyon is 200 miles long. Do this math and imagine what little is left.
In 1983 the dam was almost overtopped (water flowing over the top of the dam instead of exiting through spillways will erode dam material and alter pressure and cause failure) after heavy rain and nearly collapsed.
Modifications were made after the water receded, including dealing with cavitation (erosion of the surface of the spillway or tunnel caused by water speed and pressure variations). Engineers thought they got "lucky" that time.
Lake Powell is 186 miles long; Glen Canyon is 200 miles long. Do this math and imagine what little is left.
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| 1983 water release - photo suggested by Jared Farmer |
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| damage to spillway, 1983 |
Modifications were made after the water receded, including dealing with cavitation (erosion of the surface of the spillway or tunnel caused by water speed and pressure variations). Engineers thought they got "lucky" that time.
Today, the dam is viewed as unneeded by some conservationists, who want to see Glen Canyon restored, and Lake Powell emptied to dead pool level.
The dam site was chosen primarily because the Sierra Club's David Brower and other major conservation groups wanted the dam built there instead of Dinosuar National Monument/Echo Canyon, another scenic area. He never went to see Glen Canyon, however, before taking this position. He visited it later on, and horrified, reversed himself and attempted to stop construction. Today he advocates for its drainage.
He stated, "I have worn sackcloth and ashes ever since, convinced that I could have saved the place if I had simply got off my duff." (http://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/199703/brower.asp) "...After the dam, Glen Canyon became known as “the place no one knew” and America’s “lost national park.” Legendary conservationist David Brower lamented, “Glen Canyon died in 1963…. Neither you nor I, nor anyone else, knew it well enough to insist that at all costs it should endure. When we began to find out it was too late.” (Glen Canyon Institute website :http://www.glencanyon.org/glen_canyon/why-glen-canyon).
How can one plead ignorance - he could have investigated, couldn't he? Why? Why?
The dam submerged a canyon with smooth sandstone red walls 800 to 1200 feet high, cut by many side canyons, one of the most remarkable features of Glen Canyon.
The dam, to my estimates, has filled about ⅔ to ¾ of the canyon heights, and backed up water 186 miles into it, created a vast shoreline, and filling the 200 mile length almost completely. It drowned many side canyons and opened passages into others. It emptied the area below the dam to varying depths, but perhaps less than 50 feet on average, depending on water release, exposing more cliffs, and depleting the river's native fish population shockingly.
The dam, to my estimates, has filled about ⅔ to ¾ of the canyon heights, and backed up water 186 miles into it, created a vast shoreline, and filling the 200 mile length almost completely. It drowned many side canyons and opened passages into others. It emptied the area below the dam to varying depths, but perhaps less than 50 feet on average, depending on water release, exposing more cliffs, and depleting the river's native fish population shockingly.
Before the dam, a river trip in this canyon offered a different experience than the Grand Canyon. Few rapids and smooth waters made the journey peaceful, quiet, and yet with the enjoyment of discovery - side canyons beckoned, and sandbars with willows made for dry campsites intimately close to the flowing river. The solitude and serenity were given freely and came easy, they say.
Guilt, regret, and anger - individual and collective, have ensnared me. The more I learned the more complex the tangles became. While I write I muffle snarls of frustration.
Made culpable by prior generations, the entitlements bequeathed me also damn me to a responsibility my personal agency is ineffective to meet.
Woody Allen once advised a graduating class of college students, “... as you embark on your life’s journey, you will come to a fork in the road. The way to the left leads to inevitable destruction. The one to the right, to despair and misery. Choose wisely.”
Brower makes a compelling case for draining Lake Powell and leaving the emptied dam standing as a cautionary monument. Lake Mead seems to have the storage capacity to hold much new water. But one function of Lake Powell, to restrain silting in Mead, would be lost, and I've yet to find how that major problem would be solved.
John Muir, it's said, died in grief because of a similar canyon's demise. He fought mightily to save Hetch-Hetchy Canyon, more beautiful than Yosemite Valley, from being damned. But President Wilson allowed the dam, enabling San Francisco to become the great metropolis it is today, at national taxpayer's cost. It seems to make a special hell for Brower - though Muir didn't have the backing or power that Brower did. But where else would the dam go? No dam was not an option in Engineer Period.
After the loss, a Glen Canyon literary genre emerged. Jared Farmer, in a 1996 article for the Western Historical Quarterly, laments with everyone the loss of a place, and the elevation of a new "place", Lake Powell, as a "discovery destination", which offers a pure experience of nature. He points out that, in fact, it might be possible to have that, but suggests that "discovering something new" is a commodification of travel experience that diminishes the experience of the natural world.
We are served by the distribution of western water, our growing population accommodated in arid lands that didn't invite us.
But something is gone, a part of our earthly connection has been destroyed, a sinew to an authentic selfhood loosed and drowned.
In the film Deliverance, I continue to find a loose morality tale of rivers. The "good" guys, unprepared for wilderness, take a dangerous raft trip on a river that is about to be dammed and are assaulted by locals. They kill at least one and dump his body into the river where it will be forever lost under the new lake. The good guys go on with their lives, one living in a cottage on that very lake. They got away with it, though they didn't deserve to.
After the loss, a Glen Canyon literary genre emerged. Jared Farmer, in a 1996 article for the Western Historical Quarterly, laments with everyone the loss of a place, and the elevation of a new "place", Lake Powell, as a "discovery destination", which offers a pure experience of nature. He points out that, in fact, it might be possible to have that, but suggests that "discovering something new" is a commodification of travel experience that diminishes the experience of the natural world. |
| includes Wallace Stegner's essay, Submersus |
But something is gone, a part of our earthly connection has been destroyed, a sinew to an authentic selfhood loosed and drowned.
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| Katie Lee, author |
In the film Deliverance, I continue to find a loose morality tale of rivers. The "good" guys, unprepared for wilderness, take a dangerous raft trip on a river that is about to be dammed and are assaulted by locals. They kill at least one and dump his body into the river where it will be forever lost under the new lake. The good guys go on with their lives, one living in a cottage on that very lake. They got away with it, though they didn't deserve to.
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| Eliot Porter's lovely photography of lost Glen Canyon |
Made culpable by prior generations, the entitlements bequeathed me also damn me to a responsibility my personal agency is ineffective to meet.
Woody Allen once advised a graduating class of college students, “... as you embark on your life’s journey, you will come to a fork in the road. The way to the left leads to inevitable destruction. The one to the right, to despair and misery. Choose wisely.”
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