Sunday, September 20, 2009
Flaming Gorge had been sitting up there, 40 miles away, the entire summer without my paying it a single visit. Just the name itself is enticing. Yesterday I finally made the drive up from the valley, past Steinaker and Red Fleet reservoirs, on to the plateau further north.
Mostly, I came to hike. The sky was bright blue, sun was shining, and I had a trail map. But first things first, gotta see the dam. I understand the thought process and reasoning for building dams... the west is dry and overpopulated. People need water and they need it to be there even during years of drought. People also like electricity, and the turbines like this one at Flaming Gorge,
that spin in perpetuum at the base of these dams produce enough electricity to power a city of 32,000 people. And I must admit the engineering feat of constructing a giant concrete wall that safely and successfully holds back billions of gallons of water is enough to flutter the heart with national pride.
The beavers had to go and build another goddamned dam on the Colorado. Not satisfied with the enormous silt trap and evaporation tank called Lake Mead (back of Boulder Dam) they have created another even bigger, even more destructive, in Glen Canyon. This reservoir of stagnant water will not irrigate a single square foot of land or supply water for a single village; its only justification is the generation of cash through electricity for the indirect subsidy of various real estate speculators, cottongrowers and sugarbeet magnates in Arizona, Utah and Colorado; also, of course, to keep the engineers and managers of the Reclamation Bureau off the streets and out of trouble.
The impounded waters form an artificial lake named Powell, supposedly to honor but actually to dishonor the memory, spirit and vision of Major John Wesley Powell, first American to make a systematic exploration of the Colorado Riiver and its environs. Where he and his brave men once lined the rapids and glided through silent canyons two thousand feet deep the motorboats now smoke and whine, scumming the water with cigarette butts, beer cans and oil, dragging the water skiers on their endless rounds, clockwise.
PLAY SAFE, read the official signboards; SKI ONLY IN CLOCKWISE DIRECTION; LET'S ALL HAVE FUN TOGETHER! With regulations enforced by water cops in government uniforms. Sold. Down the river.
Once it was different there. I know, for I was one of the lucky few (there could have been thousands more) who saw Glen Canyon before it was drowned. In fact I saw only a part of it but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth's original paradise. To grasp the nature of the crime that was committed imagine the Taj Mahal or Chartres Cathedral buried in mud until only the spires remain visible. With this difference: those man-made celebrations of human aspiration could conceivably be reconstructed while Glen Canyon was a living thing, irreplaceable, which can never be recovered through any human agency.
On the other side, we have this:
Afterwards, I took a drive, tried to go on the Sheep Creek Geological Loop, but the road was awful and I am hyper-paranoid about my car's tires at the moment, and it was pouring rain, so I turned around after five miles of potholes.
The colors and trees got me so high. Felt like Vermont in October.
Big horn sheep!
The river is running to the south; the mountains have an easterly and westerly trend directly athwart its course, yet it glides on in a quiet way as if it thought a mountain range no formidable obstruction. It enters the range by a flaring, brilliant red gorge, that may be seen from the north a score of miles away. The great mass of the mountain ridge through which the gorge is cut is composed of bright vermilion rocks; but they are surmounted by broad bands of mottled buff and gray,and these bands come down with a gentle curve to the water's edge on the nearer slope of the mountain.This is the head of the first of the canyons we are about to explore--an introductory one to a series made by the river through this range. We name it Flaming Gorge. -John Wesley Powell
4 comments:
Edward Abbey can dam write!!
And so can you. Wonderful post Nikki. I love reading about your adventures.
I love this post!! Oh, so beautiful! I love your writing, Nikki, it makes me so happy to know that there are people out there who feel these things.
I love the way you described the three scents that transport you back to all of your sojourns in the wilderness this past summer. It almost brought a tear to my eye!
I love that you fed the fishies. I was picturing you hovering above them, thinking they were gross but feeding them anyway. :)
And I've seen Lake Powell. It's hideous. The rocks aren't, but the lake itself is drying up in a major way and it looks desolate.
Post a Comment