river reflections
It’s been almost 2 months since Earth Day, and the two-year anniversary of this Substack. I wanted to write something profound and inspiring to mark the occasion – there’s never been a more important time to be profoundly inspired to care about the environment – but I couldn’t find the words.
Do I write yet another call to action, encouraging people to take a stand against the demolition of environmental agencies and public lands when I have been struggling to find ways to take action of my own?
Do I write about positive environmental news when the future of our planet seems so bleak in the hands of our current administration?
Amidst all of this, the seasons changed and I had to pack up all of my belongings and head north for my summer job.
Going through life changes, stressing about work and interpersonal relationships, it’s easy to get distracted from big-picture issues. I think it’s necessary sometimes. We can’t always carry that burden.
But I also found myself out of touch with news and events I should be aware of, removed from the work I want to be doing and the stories I want to be writing. How to motivate yourself to reconnect with such things?
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the river recently, mostly for work, mostly alone in my boat, rowing hundreds of pounds of gear downstream.
There is ample time to think out there, to take in the sights and sounds of the river or simply to contemplate. I ruminate on life, the choices I made that got me here, or on water politics as I navigate my boat through 850 cubic feet per second of dam-released river water. Or perhaps I just think about how hungry I am, and should I break out my emergency Snickers bar at the next rapid scout?
I watch the water round a bend in the river, reset the angle of my boat, catch the current and slide past a wall of sandstone, close enough to see the whorls and waves of ancient sand dunes, but far enough that my oar doesn’t collide with the rock.
I watch a great blue heron wade through the shallows, head bobbing like a dinosaur. Then it takes off, suddenly graceful, at one with the wind. “GBH!” I point it out to the other boats.
I gaze at the Utah junipers clinging to the cliffs above me, green against red. Maybe there’s a bighorn sheep and her baby picking their way along the narrow rock faces. We are thousands of feet down in the canyon – I wonder what the view must be like from up there.
Then the wind picks up and all I can think about is making progress downstream. I have to fight for it, pulling so hard that my hands blister. My whole body hurts and I’m miserable, until we arrive at camp and I promptly forget about it. Type II fun.
I’m almost always busy on river trips, setting up camp, cooking dinner for guests, tending to the campfire, doing the dishes. But I try to stop as often as I can to take it in, to appreciate the river canyon. I make sure to look up at the constellations while I brush my teeth.
I love it out here. All of the river guides do, with such a fierce intensity that you’d think we were all born and raised right here at mile 230 of the Green River.
We sing its praises to the guests on our trips, fanatically try to convert them into our cult-like appreciation for the river. I like to think that we often succeed.
We have a captive audience out here, people who will listen to the story of the almost-dam that would have drowned this river canyon in hundreds of feet of water, or the fight against invasive tamarisk plants that steal water and nutrients from the native willows. We talk about the four remaining native fish species as if they’re our friends and we call out the rock layers, hundreds of millions of years old, by name.
And I do think people leave the river changed. When you get to spend time in such a beautiful, fragile place, one that is increasingly at risk from mismanagement and pollution and extraction, the consequences become real to you, you are challenged to care.
So I have been out of the loop, dismayed when I turn my phone back on after 4 days on the water to read about yet another executive decision to slash away protections from our parks and monuments and national forests.
But I have been more attuned to rhythms of the river canyon, more aware of this ecosystem and more able to educate and have discussions about its importance and its vulnerability.
Paradoxically, I have been removed from much of the breaking environmental news and governmental decisions while simultaneously being immersed in one of the ecosystems that is actively threatened by those decisions.
I haven’t written much these past couple months, but I feel I’ve been given the tools and the opportunity to have those conversations in person, to keep fighting for our lands in this small way.
I think we should all be spending time on the river, or whatever your equivalent is, taking in the resplendence of nature, contemplating the complexity of Earth’s ecosystems, remembering why we care.
And then, I hope, we can jump back into the fight with renewed vigor, with unshakable certainty in our cause.
Because I would like the ability to keep running this river, to see the herons and sheep meandering peacefully on the water’s edge and the native fish darting in and out of eddies, to float past trees and wildflowers moored directly into the cliffs, and to keep showing people this ecosystem and letting it change them.
Call the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining: (202) 224-4971
Reach out to these senators: https://www.energy.senate.gov/sub-public-lands-forests-mining