July 1996: The Big & the Small of it All...

by Jim Stiles

      I managed to miss Jeep Safari, Easter Week and at least some of our hectic spring break (break for who?) this year. I came back to town just as everyone was packing up and leaving. It was a very quiet time for me; I sought sanctuary on some land a hundred miles or so south of Moab, where the elevation is about 3000 feet higher and the temperatures about 25 degrees cooler than here. So in early April my hideaway was still in the fading grip of winter, which is not very appealing to Spring Breakers.

     Knowing that such chaos was rattling the desert just a few dozen miles away made me appreciate my quiet neck of the woods even more.  The silence there is profound, sometimes maybe too quiet even for a reluctant loner like me. But I hesitate to ever complain about it because I know the precious quiet that prevails there is so tenuous and always threatened by the same forces that have, for the time being at least, turned Moab upside down. I've seen too many old trees uprooted, too many canyons defiled, too many rivers turned into stagnant pools, and too many meadows turned into condo cities to ever again think that something is just too beautiful to be threatened or destroyed.

     But sometimes there are days that are too perfect to be ruined by fears of the future and the "evil that lurks in men's minds." Sometimes the loveliness of a day is so complete and so seamless that nothing can diminish it. The big and the small of it all...in the span of a few hours, that's what I saw.

     There is a small canyon nearby; it is not particularly remarkable, and sometimes I worry about it, because the canyon lies on private land. Yet, in all the years I've been visiting it, I've never seen another human footprint but my own. I'm the only intruder in this forgotten little place and I try to be as unobtrusive as possible.

     The water that has flowed through here for thousands of years has sculpted the Dakota sandstone and left pot hole pools and fluted falls, but away from the wash bottom the canyon breaks away in ledges and is lined with majestic Ponderosa pines. At one point the canyon drops precipitously. In the lower canyon, a stand of remnant aspens cling to life in a place where they are not supposed to be. This cluster must have established itself sometime in the long ago past when the weather was cooler and wetter. Now, tucked into the shadowed recesses of my forgotten canyon, these trees live at an elevation usually too low for them to survive, much less to flourish.

     But they do. And on this day, so did I.

     I found an outcrop of rock, perhaps a hundred feet above the remnant aspens and, being the lazy loafer that I am, just sat there for the next three hours. There was so much to absorb...the fragrance of the Ponderosas, the sound of the wind blowing through those mighty trees and the trickle of water over the drop-off into the aspens. I saw five mule deer wander into the canyon, pause briefly for a drink and then move west out of the canyon on the far side. They never saw me, just a hundred or so feet away.

     But I was most intrigued by a bird that I followed from tree to tree for almost an hour. It was a hairy woodpecker, I think. I'm not a 'birder' by any means. I only made a positive ID later when I could consult the book. But not knowing the scientific details did nothing to diminish my appreciation or admiration for this little winged guy.

     Of course, I heard him before I ever saw him, pecking away at a tall tree, and looking for lunch, I suppose. His persistence was remarkable, not to mention his endurance. As I watched him pound away incessantly at the bark with his beak, I wondered why all woodpeckers and flickers don't have splitting headaches most of the time.

     Maybe they do and they're just real stoic about it.

     The woodpecker finally moved farther downstream and I lost sight of him. But I had been able to share an afternoon in a place that could only be described as perfect. 

     That night, in a sage brush meadow above the canyon, I was treated to another spectacle. Away from the lights of any town, in a polished night sky, I watched the Comet Hyakutaki streak across the stars on its way to a rendezvous with the sun. Its tail extended twenty degrees across the constellations. The comet was brilliant and such a startling sight in a night sky that is otherwise as familiar as an old friend. Hyakutaki was the cosmic event of the year, although, had it passed about nine million miles closer to Earth, we would have been kissing our loved ones goodbye rather than enjoying an "astronomical event." It was after all, a comet that most likely slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago and set into motion a chain of events that altered the course of life on this planet. But this time around, at least, the comet was nothing more than a beautiful cosmic mystery to behold.

     But when I thought about it, the comet was no more spectacular or mysterious than my little canyon to the west. The intricacies of that place are no less amazing than Hyakutaki. The comet is a ball of ice and rock that hurtles through the black void of space at thousands of miles an hour. 

     My canyon teems with life and color and is immersed in sweet sounds and pleasant fragrances.

     The comet evokes feelings of awe and amazement; the canyon is more intimate and warm.

     The comet's distance gives it an air of mystery, but millions saw it as it hurtled across the heavens. Only I know what the canyon looks like or how to find it.

     The difference is their vulnerability. The comet had the good sense, which is pretty remarkable for an inanimate object, to steer clear of us. It will circle the sun and then head back to deep space for...who knows how long. By the time it returns, it may not be able to feel so secure, however. Scientists already discuss the possibility of asteroids and comets colliding again with our planet and have devised all kinds of ways to deter them, usually by blowing them up. It'll be the comet or us...one of us has to go.

     But my unknown canyon, and the many living things that call it home can only hope for continued anonymity. As amazing and mysterious as it can be, I'm grateful my canyon doesn't glow like the comet. Its hiding place would be uncovered in an instant and its light extinguished just as fast...and extinguished most likely by others like me.

     So don't ask me where it is. Find your own forgotten little canyon and don't tell a soul.

SELF-CONGRATULATORY NONSENSE

AT GLEN CANYON DAM

     The National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Secretary of the Interior could not have been prouder of themselves last month. With the national media gathered to witness this "historic event," Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt threw a switch and released into the Colorado River up to 45,000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs) from the bowels of this country's most despised and controversial dam...Glen Canyon Dam.

     This section of the wild Colorado River last flowed freely in the winter of 1962. The following spring, the diversion gates at the recently completed dam were sealed and water began to rise behind it, forming today's Lake Powell. Also stopped by the dam was all the sediment that the Colorado River once transported with it (The word 'Colorado' describes the red color of the river as it carried millions of tons of sediment to the Gulf of California.) Beaches and sand bars in the Grand Canyon, downstream from the dam, have been washed away by regular water releases through the turbines at the dam ever since, which usually flow through the canyon at a rate of about 12,000 cfs. Those turbine releases contain clear water...all the sediment is being deposited in the lake; thus, there is no new sediment to replace what has been washed away in the past 33 years.          

     And BuRec's Great Flood of '96 didn't change anything in that respect. The idea behind the beach-building plan was to send a greater volume of water through the downstream canyon with the hope that the force of the flood would stir up a lot of the pre-existing sediment that had settled at the bottom of the river. That sediment would then be pushed to the edges of the river, creating new beaches. But there still isn't any new sediment, at least not from the Colorado River. Lake Powell is filling with it, but below the dam, the Department of Interior will have to make do with what's left from more than 30 years ago.

     That didn't keep Interior Secretary Babbitt from proclaiming his efforts a great success. "What we're doing is understanding everything relates," said Babbitt, "and if we're going to find equilibrium on this landscape we're going to see the entire watershed (emphasis added) as a unit and manage it as an ecosystem."

     What? Apparently, as Secretary Babbitt flipped the lever that opened the jet tubes to release all that water, he somehow failed to notice the 700 foot high concrete monstrosity that loomed behind him...Glen Canyon Dam itself. All these well-intentioned gestures would not have been necessary were it not for the construction of the damn dam in the first place. You bet "everything relates," Mr. Babbitt, and if you think the dam has caused the Colorado River eco-system problems downstream, you should see what it's done upstream.

     Of course you can't see what the upstream effects have been because Glen Canyon, perhaps the most beautiful canyon complex on the face of our earth, is buried by 27,000,000 acre feet of water. So when Babbitt says we must see "the entire watershed as a unit and manage it as an ecosystem," does he think the eco-system naturally started at Glen Canyon Dam? And if he doesn't...if he acknowledges that man's stupidity and shortsightedness are responsible for the dam, if he really believes that "everything relates," is he also prepared to go down in history as the most visionary Secretary of Interior to ever wear the shoes by ordering the dismantling of the dam and restoring the complete eco-system of the Colorado River?

     I wouldn't hold my breath, but that's the bottom line. Glen Canyon Dam should never have been built and would never be built today. The American people would never stand for it. Ironically and sadly, it was the loss of Glen Canyon that inspired many to say, "Never again." When the Bureau of Reclamation attempted to follow Glen Canyon Dam with a series of dams down stream in the Grand Canyon, the agency met a solid wall of opposition. In ways, the river still flows free through the Grand Canyon because of the sacrifice that was made upstream.

     Even former staunch proponents of Glen Canyon Dam now regret their support. As late as 1974, Senator Barry Goldwater still felt the dam was an improvement over the untamed river. But by the mid-80s, he felt otherwise. In one interview, in fact, Goldwater lamented that if he could change just one Senate vote he'd cast in 30 years, it would have been his vote to approve construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

     I hope that someday we not only have the good sense to admit that Glen Canyon Dam was a mistake, but that we have the courage and the wisdom to right that terrible wrong.