Piecing Together Our Complicated Relationship With Water
Exploring the push and pull over the power of water and the ways it influences our lives and society
Welcome back to Human Nature. This week, we’re continuing our Way of Water series, where we are diving deep into the human relationship with water. Through the end of this month, I’ll be sharing some stories about my personal relationship with water.
After that, we’ll be going into the different ways humanity interacts with water, from conversations with individuals connected with water, to deep dives into water-based therapies, to even the exploration of current water issues. Through this series, we will explore a deeper understanding of our connection to water.
This week, I’m sharing a bit about my relationship with one of the world’s most iconic rivers, the Colorado River, and why our society’s connection to this river highlights the conflicted and complicated relationship we have with water.
Across humanity, our relationship with water is complicated. Many of our cities, communities, and cultures are based around the presence of water, especially rivers and lakes.
At the same time, though, water is a resource, and across the history of time, we have fought to have control over this resource, going to great lengths to contain, regulate, and take ownership of it.
One of the perfect examples of this complicated relationship is the Colorado River, the iconic body of flowing water in western North America.
The Colorado River is arguably one of the most famous rivers in the world, and the defining river system west of the Mississippi. From its headwaters in Northern Colorado to the picturesque vistas of the Grand Canyon to the desert landscapes where it meets the Gulf of California, this 1,450-mile stretch of river has been a centerpiece of human society for thousands of years.
The river has also been a pivotal part of society, providing the backdrop for American frontierism, playing an important role in many indigenous cultures, and being one of the most famous drivers for nature-based tourism in the United States.
If you think too long about it, though, this relationship can seem strange. We deeply love and care for this river. So much so that many people travel thousands of miles to simply look upon the raging waters of the Colorado. We’ve even built entire cities in its shadow, and our society relies on its annual flows to provide the necessary water for millions of people across several different states.
Yet, it’s also one of the most dammed river systems in the world, and every year, it is becoming more and more at risk of extinction.
This is the catch. We have found a way to build entire industries around our attempt to exert some control over water. Despite our love of water and desire to seek its presence in our lives, at the end of the day, it’s also a resource, and that makes things, well, complicated.
For me, this conflict between love and control manifests in my personal relationship with the Colorado River, and more accurately with one specific body of water: Lake Powell.
As a kid, I spent a good amount of time on the two famous (infamous) man-made reservoirs on both sides of the Grand Canyon: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Through those experiences, I’ve grown to have a profound connection with specifically Lake Powell, which has been the backdrop for some of my fondest childhood memories.
The cascading walls of rock that provide the geologic container for the lake, the never-ending snake-like corridors that spread out in all directions, or the picturesque rock formations that can be found along trails across the landscape.
I have so many fond memories of the place, and spending time in the area as a kid was one of the biggest inspirations for me to get involved in conservation and wildlife biology.
Yet, since I’ve gotten older, my relationship with Lake Powell has gotten a bit more complicated. As I’ve learned about the history of the Colorado River, and especially the history of water in the western United States, I’ve come to see Lake Powell in different ways.
Lake Powell was formed in 1966 with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, one of the largest dam projects, at the time, in American history. This cascading 710-foot dam is no small feat of engineering. It’s a massive dam and holds back nearly 8.8 trillion gallons of water on the lakeside of the wall.
Since its inception, the Glen Canyon Dam has been hailed by one side as a modern marvel and by the other as a scar on the Earth.
Many believe that Glen Canyon Dam destroyed the landscape of the Colorado River and exacerbated a lot of the issues with water that we are now feeling across western communities. It’s also considered an unnecessary part of the destruction of one of the most beloved landscapes in western North America, Glen Canyon.
This canyon used to be a brimming ecosystem with an incredible diversity of life, all flowing naturally around the twists and turns of the Colorado River. When Lake Powell was flooded, this landscape was lost, which led to an outpouring of grief, anger, and a call to destroy the now-infamous Glen Canyon Dam.
That anxiety and animosity towards the dam is no better shared than in Edward Abbey’s famous novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Although the novel is a fictionalized account of a group of rag-tag environmental activists, the sentiment behind the book is very much part of this dam’s history.
As a kid, I was unaware of these issues or the animosity towards Lake Powell. Most of my life, I didn’t even realize that there was a canyon under the lake, albeit one of the most beautiful canyons on the planet.
Yet, over the years of working in conservation and wildlife, as well as reporting on some of these issues, I’ve started to learn a lot more about its history. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve started to have a complicated relationship with the lake.
On one side, our attempts to gain control over the Colorado River have led to Lake Powell, which has played such an important role in my life. On the other side, the ways we have altered this landscape to exert power over the natural processes of this iconic river are tragic, and may have repercussions for decades to come.
Last Spring, I was at Lake Powell for an ultra-marathon and got to stand on the Glen Canyon Dam for the first time since coming to this understanding about the lake.
I stood there looking out at Lake Powell, with dozens of houseboats and a handful of jet-skis filtering in and out of the Wahweap Marina.
I started to imagine what this landscape might look like without the dam. For a few moments, I pictured the entirety of Glen Canyon spread out below me. The raging river powering its way around every turn. The pockets of wildlife evading the sun in the shade under cottonwood trees. No sounds of motors, no marinas, and no houseboats.
It seemed sad. A place that was once a massive canyon filled with a thriving biodiversity of life, now transformed into this ecological machine, meant to support the growth of humanity.
In this imagined reality, I realized something about the conflict between nature and humanity. When placed against the timeless and powerful forces of the natural world, our species feels an overwhelming need to contain and control them.
Yet, staring out over the constructed landscape of this manmade reservoir, I couldn’t help but think what would happen if we found a way to live with nature, instead of trying to harness it?
Maybe in surrendering to the power natural forces such as water, we can begin to resculpt our relationship to the planet and become stewards of a better future.
As I worked through these thoughts, I couldn’t help but think of Edward Abbey and The Monkey Wrench Gang, and wonder what would really happen if we unleashed the power of the Colorado River, and let it be free to once again write its own story across the landscapes of the desert Southwest.
Later in this series, we’ll be exploring the push and pull over the control of water in more depth, discussing some current environmental issues, historical efforts to control water, and ways the attempted ownership of this resource has a profound effect on our society.
Remember to sign up for the Human Nature Happy Hour event on May 22nd from 4:30 to 5:30 PM PST!
During the Happy Hour, we’ll be getting together to discuss our connection with nature, sharing stories from our adventures, and getting nerdy about the natural world.
All you’ll need for this event is yourself and a drink (coffee, mocktails, or even water) of your choice. We’ll get together for an hour to chat and learn more about each other and the way we view the natural world.
I hope you join us! If so, please register below to let me know you’re coming. I’m excited to meet more people in this community and nerd out about our big and beautiful planet.
Story of the Week
This week’s story of the week is a film, which explores the damming of rivers across the western United States.
DamNation is a film by Ben Knight and Travis Rummel that chronicles their attempts to understand the history of dams across the western United States. Throughout the film, their crew explores different dams on the Columbia River, Elwha River, and, of course, the Colorado River.
In one section of the film, the Glen Canyon Dam is highlighted, and we are introduced to a few individuals who had a very deep connection to the Glen Canyon before the construction of the dam. This portion of the documentary provides a look at the beauty of Glen Canyon and the reality of what was lost.
You can check out the film here.
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Thanks for being here, friends. See you in the next one.
With love,
Keegan
