so we’re up early in the morning and
we’re heading across the bay to the
Cathedral in the desert which is a place
we’ve all been looking forward to go
into this beautiful alcove back at the
end of the high-water mark in the
Escalante canyons and it’s been
underwater for 50 or 60 years but it’s
still beautiful and we’re excited to go
back there and check it out it’ll be a
[Music]
thank you buddy
you hiker man so I grew up in the desert
Southwest and learned to walk and a lot
of the desert canyons out at an Utah in
Arizona and one of the things I took –
at a young age was kayaking and that
allowed me to experience the Colorado
and its tributaries and really fall in
love with these new rivers that we have
in the West excellent growing up in the
river running community in the southwest
one of the things you hear about all the
time is Glen Canyon this place that was
an extraordinary iconic canyon on the
Colorado River that was lost when Glen
Canyon Dam was built in 1963 so growing
up hearing all these these stories about
these incredible places like cathedral
madrid and music temple it was hard
because I knew this was a place that was
a lost world it was a place that was
underneath the waters of Lake Powell
that I would probably never get to
experience during the past few decades
as climate change has impacted the
rivers of the West and as populations
have continued to grow an interesting
thing is actually happening the waters
that Lake Powell are are dropping
so I called up a few filemaker friends
of mine who were crazy enough to join me
on this expedition i had planned and
what we wanted to do is start in moab
utah on the colorado river and travel
through cataract Canyon down to the
place where the river meets the lake and
then paddle across the reservoir and
explore side canyons along the way to
see what might be coming back i wanted
to put together a trip that would allow
me to to maybe experience a bit of this
so cataract Canyon is a really unique
stretch of river it’s totally
free-flowing there’s not a dam for
hundreds of miles upstream as these
incredibly powerful Rapids it’s really a
chance to experience the Colorado River
as it was before development I kind of
had this hope that I could run a lot of
the rapids in this big long sea kayak
but everyone I talked to said you know
that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever
heard
and I think among our group there was a
bit of a bet running about how many
rapids that would last until I got
so this project was my first river trip
ever and I I was so clueless going into
it I learned a lot really fast and I was
really intimidated and by the time
around the river within two hours I was
in love we get to camp it night and set
up the kitchen which you know I’m used
to backpacking your car camping which is
like cook dinner as fast as you can so
you can climb into your sleeping bag on
the river we had these elaborate dinners
it was unlike anything I’ve ever
experienced it was truly amazing so
yesterday we hiked up to the dolls house
up behind us here basically we got back
and they were sand all in our tents I
it was our first hardship I’d say it was
pretty fun oh I was just part of the
there’s the the hype the night before
the big drops or you know you’re sitting
at camp having never been on a river
trip I had no idea what that meant I was
just like okay these like big rapids
we’re gonna see what happens and they
were pretty intense so pretty nervous
about the the Rapids downstream but
desert rivers and desert rapids are kind
of my favorite my favorite whitewater
there is because you get this big slow
paddle up in the pool above the rapid
and you got plenty of time to get nice
and nervous and you’re listening to the
thundering of the rapid just downstream
and then you kind of break the horizon
line and drop into this big glass and
so when Lake Powell is at its highest
extent it actually reached all the way
up cataract Canyon to the base of the
big drops so what we were traveling
through after the big drops was a
section of river that had once been
underneath Lake Powell and what you find
is a very changed environment there are
massive piles of sediment along the
riverbanks left there by the lake there
are all these invasive plant species you
know gone are the beaches that that line
the upper stretch of the Colorado River
and now there are these cracked sediment
every adventure comes with some trials
and tribulations and unfortunately this
adventure I got the brunt of those
tribulations I stepped into the sand
where the fire pan had been sitting and
I had gotten second-degree burns on the
top and bottom of my foot I found a
broken oar at camp the next night and
used it as a as a cane hobbling along
and then when we got off the river it
was decided that I was going to go home
which was really hard I was pretty
devastated you know we’d been prepping
for this trip for almost a year and I
was having the time of my life and so I
ended up going home for two and a half
weeks when I rejoined them about 17 days
after we got off the river and before we
began the reservoir portion of our
expedition there were a bunch of
questions that we all really wanted
answered one of the things you hear a
lot about when it comes to the Colorado
River is just how overused and over
allocated it is I mean it’s no
exaggeration to say that you know the
Colorado is probably the most heavily
dammed and comprehensively controlled
river system not only then at the United
States but in the world the river itself
has been allocated and used to the point
where there’s not a single drop of water
left the river simply dies it never even
reaches the Sea of Cortez
that’s how heavily we have used this
thing we’ve literally killed it a lot of
these dams that control the river
there’s no way they would have been
built today they were all built in the
50s and 60s and one of the questions I
had was you know if they wouldn’t be
built today why were they built 50 years
ago so the river is over allocated for a
lot of reasons a lot of historical
reasons that really have to do with the
way the western United States developed
there was a huge expansion of the West
in the late 1800s and the early 1900s
populations started to move from the
eastern United States into the western
US and they brought with them their
demand for water and their demand for
water took the form of agricultural
demands for water but also the
communities that we developed were
designed like Eastern communities with
big lawns and and bigger urban household
demands for water and all of those
things put pressure on all of the water
resources in the West
at that time California was building
these large infrastructure projects with
canals and irrigating large swaths of
land and the way that water rights work
is whoever is the first to put water to
a beneficial use will establish an
indefinite right and so the upper basin
states of Utah and Colorado were looking
at the growth and development that was
happening in California and they said to
themselves if we don’t have a way to
capture this this water upstream
California is going to develop it all
and we’ll never have a legal right to
use it in the future we’ll never have a
chance to grow if we don’t have a dam
upstream Glen Canyon Dam itself was
constructed to serve as a holding tank
for upper basin States to deliver their
legal allotment of Colorado River water
downstream and hold on to any excess
you never a second leg so try to stay
I wasn’t really sure what to expect
exactly I come in from New England I
I’ve spent most my life in trees you
know kind of claustrophobic in woods you
know when Taylor asked me to come on the
expedition I was I’ve been to the desert
before I’d spent a little time in
Colorado but wasn’t really sure what
what I was getting into and it’s really
hard to describe what it’s actually like
to be out there the lake is a really
different environment than anything I
had explored before and that brought
with it a lot of challenges that I
hadn’t really expected one of those that
I hadn’t really thought would be much of
an issue that became a very big issue
was the wing along many stretches of the
lake there are just sheer sandstone
walls rising straight out of the water
and not really an easy place to get out
of your boat if things get dicey out on
the lake and we had a few stretches of
extreme wind where the wind would
actually whip up these three to
four-foot waves we just got caught up in
this really big windstorm and I started
taking on a bunch of water and had to
get out of the lake fast so I came up to
the shoreline and it’s just covered in
this slippery slippery Moss right at the
waterline I slid in
cut my hand all up try and grip and stay
stay on the shoreline and luckily
finally found a little bit of purchase
and managed to get the boat out we’re
having a multi-course meal tonight first
course is mushrooms and rice with
sun-dried tomatoes in hot sauce and then
we’re having a small course of sardines
to cleanse the palate it’s a slot
canyons man I had never been in
something like that in my entire life
you’re walking through these candidates
which are fairly tall and skinny in the
first place but then you suddenly get
this farce like trying to fit yourself
and a camera bag through it’s a
challenge and you’d have to spin the
wall to try and get through you know
like push your bag through first kind of
monkey your way up the wall and then
suddenly you just get to this place
where it’s just like a hundred-year-old
cottonwood at the base of this like blue
pool you can’t believe it it’s like out
of a movie like it’s not even real
pretty much you look up on the side of
the canyon wall and you can just see the
high-water mark so you know you’re
standing in a place that was once 20 or
and it was such a relief to be there and
realized that life had returned to this
portion of Glen Canyon when Glen Canyon
Dam was built one of the things that the
dam builders said was how great this
location was because there’s nothing in
the canyons that were going to be
submerged one of the things that was
most shocking to me that we discovered
on this expedition was the fact that
that simply was not true there were
people living in Glen Canyon before the
dam was built pipes are are well known
for our structured family lifestyles
small families taking care of what you
guys do for Jesse Springs so there were
many along the Colorado River a lot of
seat springs in areas to farming back in
the days before the before the lake
actually came up you know the elderlies
used to say that there there was a lot
of basket materials that they used to
harvest and gather like in the in the
fall along the San Juan River and then a
lot of them you know had their orchards
they had cornfields along the river and
then to top it all off they had homes
along the river you know a lot of
families that that grew up in that area
it was very devastating to have to have
to leave and no you can’t come back to
an area that you were born you know when
we’re born when our umbilical cord falls
out we buried that back in the place
where we come
to have this place filled up with water
backed up with water was sad because you
could not go back there you couldn’t
show your kid fear you’re history like
to send won’t say that they lost a lot
of farms but they also lost a lot of the
history with the people who they cared
about the most when I got back from my
hiatus for my foot burn we started the
next leg of the of the trip on the San
Juan River where we decided to put in so
that we could paddle down to the lake it
was actually a place where I took out a
lot on river trips as a kid and what you
see at this put in is a massive sign
that says warning do not go downstream
waterfall this is what we plan to do
we’re going along like is that the
waterfall is that the waterfall and
there are these tiny little riffles and
like small drops like maybe this is it
and it’s just changed and it’s become
eroded have we already passed the
waterfall when we were actually near the
so we’re standing on top of Paiute Falls
on the San Juan River and this big
waterfall that were standing on top of
is actually a result of the reservoir
when the lake was all the way up here
the San Juan brought in just tons and
tons of sediments all of that sediment
actually diverted the river away from
its original course and it ended up now
pouring off of this big beauty were
standing on top of we’ve got to find a
way to get our big fully loaded kayaks
around this waterfall we wanted
originally we wanted to go to the left
side of the waterfall but there’s a lot
of current over there and we don’t
really want to be swept over it so what
we’re going to try to do is bring our
boats up to the edge of this little
cliff here on the side of the waterfall
and to kind of pass them down to a point
where we can do some sort of a little
seal slide into the Eddy below the
waterfall that’s kind of plant a we
don’t have a plan B yet let’s see if it
when I tell people that we did that
they’re like no you can’t there’s a
waterfall oh there’s a way so the
section of the San Juan River directly
below the waterfall had this really wild
feeling to it in a really special
feeling to it but really before we had
the chance to enjoy it too much or take
out our cameras we were back into the
realm of the reservoir there was lots
and lots of mud which I became quite
intimately acquainted with probably good
even muddier when we were back on the
reservoir after our short time on the
San Juan River it felt a lot harder to
be out there there aren’t really any
sounds out on the reservoir it’s a place
where very little can survive because
there’s nothing but rock and water it’s
very unnatural
and of course this is a stretch of the
lake where we’re coming up on some of
I’m Kench light old farm kid from Paris
Paris Idaho not the Paris but Paris
Idaho went to college at the University
you told us my start of that I decided
to go in a river running by really loved
river running
I love the canyons and the river itself
and the rapid Sydney but my favorite of
course was Glen Canyon him all of the
rivers and such an impact on me that I
knew exactly what I was gonna do with my
later life and find critical jobs and
call myself a river guys didn’t look
like a river guide I know a lot of river
guide looks like but I said well that’s
I thought that was going to be a great
salvation for the rest of my life but I
knew I knew even at that time and powers
would be had a destined to meet the
reservoir when I first saw it was from
the memory it was coming down by
horseback and we decided to stop it it’s
a mouse camp there then we hiked up to
up the canyon Clear Creek when I first I
it was the most amazing thing because it
was covered a bunch of willows around it
I think in a little and then push those
apart and you walk in there’s just a big
basement there and the course there was
a great big camera there on the sand
bottom boss grass-covered type of thing
is green a lot of that was Green when I
first saw and there was a stream of
water coming down a little waterfall
from the problem I didn’t see at that
most beautiful thing I think I ever saw
sitting in the cathedral in the desert
that day and really floating on top of
what was the Cathedral in the desert was
devastating I was mourning the loss of
this place as kind of described it I was
also angry I was angry that our
generation never got to see the
Cathedral and see at Glen Canyon as it
was as it should have been I was angry
that we never had the chance to speak
for this place at the time the cathedral
felt like some sort of a metaphor for
the loss of all of Glen Canyon I felt
like a metaphor for the ways in which we
have destroyed and dominated the
Colorado River this river this thing
you spend a year planning and talking
about Glen Canyon Dam and then you spend
a month and a half paddling to get to
Glen Canyon Dam and then it’s the day
that you’re actually getting to Glen
Canyon Dam this thing you’ve talked
about for so long and you come around
this last Bend and it’s just there the
hard way what facing the dam reminded me
of is the impermanence of our attempts
to dam and divert and dominate the
Colorado River when I consider these
canyons that we paddled through that
were all carved over millions and
millions of years by the power of the
Colorado River inch by inch into the
Colorado Plateau I feel a sense of hope
for the future of this river if we as a
society can rethink the way we manage
water if we can rethink and respect the
rivers that give us so much there is a
future in which the Colorado River can
[Music]
the boots have gone away the fish oh
[Music] you
we’re heading across the bay to the
Cathedral in the desert which is a place
we’ve all been looking forward to go
into this beautiful alcove back at the
end of the high-water mark in the
Escalante canyons and it’s been
underwater for 50 or 60 years but it’s
still beautiful and we’re excited to go
back there and check it out it’ll be a
[Music]
thank you buddy
you hiker man so I grew up in the desert
Southwest and learned to walk and a lot
of the desert canyons out at an Utah in
Arizona and one of the things I took –
at a young age was kayaking and that
allowed me to experience the Colorado
and its tributaries and really fall in
love with these new rivers that we have
in the West excellent growing up in the
river running community in the southwest
one of the things you hear about all the
time is Glen Canyon this place that was
an extraordinary iconic canyon on the
Colorado River that was lost when Glen
Canyon Dam was built in 1963 so growing
up hearing all these these stories about
these incredible places like cathedral
madrid and music temple it was hard
because I knew this was a place that was
a lost world it was a place that was
underneath the waters of Lake Powell
that I would probably never get to
experience during the past few decades
as climate change has impacted the
rivers of the West and as populations
have continued to grow an interesting
thing is actually happening the waters
that Lake Powell are are dropping
so I called up a few filemaker friends
of mine who were crazy enough to join me
on this expedition i had planned and
what we wanted to do is start in moab
utah on the colorado river and travel
through cataract Canyon down to the
place where the river meets the lake and
then paddle across the reservoir and
explore side canyons along the way to
see what might be coming back i wanted
to put together a trip that would allow
me to to maybe experience a bit of this
so cataract Canyon is a really unique
stretch of river it’s totally
free-flowing there’s not a dam for
hundreds of miles upstream as these
incredibly powerful Rapids it’s really a
chance to experience the Colorado River
as it was before development I kind of
had this hope that I could run a lot of
the rapids in this big long sea kayak
but everyone I talked to said you know
that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever
heard
and I think among our group there was a
bit of a bet running about how many
rapids that would last until I got
so this project was my first river trip
ever and I I was so clueless going into
it I learned a lot really fast and I was
really intimidated and by the time
around the river within two hours I was
in love we get to camp it night and set
up the kitchen which you know I’m used
to backpacking your car camping which is
like cook dinner as fast as you can so
you can climb into your sleeping bag on
the river we had these elaborate dinners
it was unlike anything I’ve ever
experienced it was truly amazing so
yesterday we hiked up to the dolls house
up behind us here basically we got back
and they were sand all in our tents I
it was our first hardship I’d say it was
pretty fun oh I was just part of the
there’s the the hype the night before
the big drops or you know you’re sitting
at camp having never been on a river
trip I had no idea what that meant I was
just like okay these like big rapids
we’re gonna see what happens and they
were pretty intense so pretty nervous
about the the Rapids downstream but
desert rivers and desert rapids are kind
of my favorite my favorite whitewater
there is because you get this big slow
paddle up in the pool above the rapid
and you got plenty of time to get nice
and nervous and you’re listening to the
thundering of the rapid just downstream
and then you kind of break the horizon
line and drop into this big glass and
so when Lake Powell is at its highest
extent it actually reached all the way
up cataract Canyon to the base of the
big drops so what we were traveling
through after the big drops was a
section of river that had once been
underneath Lake Powell and what you find
is a very changed environment there are
massive piles of sediment along the
riverbanks left there by the lake there
are all these invasive plant species you
know gone are the beaches that that line
the upper stretch of the Colorado River
and now there are these cracked sediment
every adventure comes with some trials
and tribulations and unfortunately this
adventure I got the brunt of those
tribulations I stepped into the sand
where the fire pan had been sitting and
I had gotten second-degree burns on the
top and bottom of my foot I found a
broken oar at camp the next night and
used it as a as a cane hobbling along
and then when we got off the river it
was decided that I was going to go home
which was really hard I was pretty
devastated you know we’d been prepping
for this trip for almost a year and I
was having the time of my life and so I
ended up going home for two and a half
weeks when I rejoined them about 17 days
after we got off the river and before we
began the reservoir portion of our
expedition there were a bunch of
questions that we all really wanted
answered one of the things you hear a
lot about when it comes to the Colorado
River is just how overused and over
allocated it is I mean it’s no
exaggeration to say that you know the
Colorado is probably the most heavily
dammed and comprehensively controlled
river system not only then at the United
States but in the world the river itself
has been allocated and used to the point
where there’s not a single drop of water
left the river simply dies it never even
reaches the Sea of Cortez
that’s how heavily we have used this
thing we’ve literally killed it a lot of
these dams that control the river
there’s no way they would have been
built today they were all built in the
50s and 60s and one of the questions I
had was you know if they wouldn’t be
built today why were they built 50 years
ago so the river is over allocated for a
lot of reasons a lot of historical
reasons that really have to do with the
way the western United States developed
there was a huge expansion of the West
in the late 1800s and the early 1900s
populations started to move from the
eastern United States into the western
US and they brought with them their
demand for water and their demand for
water took the form of agricultural
demands for water but also the
communities that we developed were
designed like Eastern communities with
big lawns and and bigger urban household
demands for water and all of those
things put pressure on all of the water
resources in the West
at that time California was building
these large infrastructure projects with
canals and irrigating large swaths of
land and the way that water rights work
is whoever is the first to put water to
a beneficial use will establish an
indefinite right and so the upper basin
states of Utah and Colorado were looking
at the growth and development that was
happening in California and they said to
themselves if we don’t have a way to
capture this this water upstream
California is going to develop it all
and we’ll never have a legal right to
use it in the future we’ll never have a
chance to grow if we don’t have a dam
upstream Glen Canyon Dam itself was
constructed to serve as a holding tank
for upper basin States to deliver their
legal allotment of Colorado River water
downstream and hold on to any excess
you never a second leg so try to stay
I wasn’t really sure what to expect
exactly I come in from New England I
I’ve spent most my life in trees you
know kind of claustrophobic in woods you
know when Taylor asked me to come on the
expedition I was I’ve been to the desert
before I’d spent a little time in
Colorado but wasn’t really sure what
what I was getting into and it’s really
hard to describe what it’s actually like
to be out there the lake is a really
different environment than anything I
had explored before and that brought
with it a lot of challenges that I
hadn’t really expected one of those that
I hadn’t really thought would be much of
an issue that became a very big issue
was the wing along many stretches of the
lake there are just sheer sandstone
walls rising straight out of the water
and not really an easy place to get out
of your boat if things get dicey out on
the lake and we had a few stretches of
extreme wind where the wind would
actually whip up these three to
four-foot waves we just got caught up in
this really big windstorm and I started
taking on a bunch of water and had to
get out of the lake fast so I came up to
the shoreline and it’s just covered in
this slippery slippery Moss right at the
waterline I slid in
cut my hand all up try and grip and stay
stay on the shoreline and luckily
finally found a little bit of purchase
and managed to get the boat out we’re
having a multi-course meal tonight first
course is mushrooms and rice with
sun-dried tomatoes in hot sauce and then
we’re having a small course of sardines
to cleanse the palate it’s a slot
canyons man I had never been in
something like that in my entire life
you’re walking through these candidates
which are fairly tall and skinny in the
first place but then you suddenly get
this farce like trying to fit yourself
and a camera bag through it’s a
challenge and you’d have to spin the
wall to try and get through you know
like push your bag through first kind of
monkey your way up the wall and then
suddenly you just get to this place
where it’s just like a hundred-year-old
cottonwood at the base of this like blue
pool you can’t believe it it’s like out
of a movie like it’s not even real
pretty much you look up on the side of
the canyon wall and you can just see the
high-water mark so you know you’re
standing in a place that was once 20 or
and it was such a relief to be there and
realized that life had returned to this
portion of Glen Canyon when Glen Canyon
Dam was built one of the things that the
dam builders said was how great this
location was because there’s nothing in
the canyons that were going to be
submerged one of the things that was
most shocking to me that we discovered
on this expedition was the fact that
that simply was not true there were
people living in Glen Canyon before the
dam was built pipes are are well known
for our structured family lifestyles
small families taking care of what you
guys do for Jesse Springs so there were
many along the Colorado River a lot of
seat springs in areas to farming back in
the days before the before the lake
actually came up you know the elderlies
used to say that there there was a lot
of basket materials that they used to
harvest and gather like in the in the
fall along the San Juan River and then a
lot of them you know had their orchards
they had cornfields along the river and
then to top it all off they had homes
along the river you know a lot of
families that that grew up in that area
it was very devastating to have to have
to leave and no you can’t come back to
an area that you were born you know when
we’re born when our umbilical cord falls
out we buried that back in the place
where we come
to have this place filled up with water
backed up with water was sad because you
could not go back there you couldn’t
show your kid fear you’re history like
to send won’t say that they lost a lot
of farms but they also lost a lot of the
history with the people who they cared
about the most when I got back from my
hiatus for my foot burn we started the
next leg of the of the trip on the San
Juan River where we decided to put in so
that we could paddle down to the lake it
was actually a place where I took out a
lot on river trips as a kid and what you
see at this put in is a massive sign
that says warning do not go downstream
waterfall this is what we plan to do
we’re going along like is that the
waterfall is that the waterfall and
there are these tiny little riffles and
like small drops like maybe this is it
and it’s just changed and it’s become
eroded have we already passed the
waterfall when we were actually near the
so we’re standing on top of Paiute Falls
on the San Juan River and this big
waterfall that were standing on top of
is actually a result of the reservoir
when the lake was all the way up here
the San Juan brought in just tons and
tons of sediments all of that sediment
actually diverted the river away from
its original course and it ended up now
pouring off of this big beauty were
standing on top of we’ve got to find a
way to get our big fully loaded kayaks
around this waterfall we wanted
originally we wanted to go to the left
side of the waterfall but there’s a lot
of current over there and we don’t
really want to be swept over it so what
we’re going to try to do is bring our
boats up to the edge of this little
cliff here on the side of the waterfall
and to kind of pass them down to a point
where we can do some sort of a little
seal slide into the Eddy below the
waterfall that’s kind of plant a we
don’t have a plan B yet let’s see if it
when I tell people that we did that
they’re like no you can’t there’s a
waterfall oh there’s a way so the
section of the San Juan River directly
below the waterfall had this really wild
feeling to it in a really special
feeling to it but really before we had
the chance to enjoy it too much or take
out our cameras we were back into the
realm of the reservoir there was lots
and lots of mud which I became quite
intimately acquainted with probably good
even muddier when we were back on the
reservoir after our short time on the
San Juan River it felt a lot harder to
be out there there aren’t really any
sounds out on the reservoir it’s a place
where very little can survive because
there’s nothing but rock and water it’s
very unnatural
and of course this is a stretch of the
lake where we’re coming up on some of
I’m Kench light old farm kid from Paris
Paris Idaho not the Paris but Paris
Idaho went to college at the University
you told us my start of that I decided
to go in a river running by really loved
river running
I love the canyons and the river itself
and the rapid Sydney but my favorite of
course was Glen Canyon him all of the
rivers and such an impact on me that I
knew exactly what I was gonna do with my
later life and find critical jobs and
call myself a river guys didn’t look
like a river guide I know a lot of river
guide looks like but I said well that’s
I thought that was going to be a great
salvation for the rest of my life but I
knew I knew even at that time and powers
would be had a destined to meet the
reservoir when I first saw it was from
the memory it was coming down by
horseback and we decided to stop it it’s
a mouse camp there then we hiked up to
up the canyon Clear Creek when I first I
it was the most amazing thing because it
was covered a bunch of willows around it
I think in a little and then push those
apart and you walk in there’s just a big
basement there and the course there was
a great big camera there on the sand
bottom boss grass-covered type of thing
is green a lot of that was Green when I
first saw and there was a stream of
water coming down a little waterfall
from the problem I didn’t see at that
most beautiful thing I think I ever saw
sitting in the cathedral in the desert
that day and really floating on top of
what was the Cathedral in the desert was
devastating I was mourning the loss of
this place as kind of described it I was
also angry I was angry that our
generation never got to see the
Cathedral and see at Glen Canyon as it
was as it should have been I was angry
that we never had the chance to speak
for this place at the time the cathedral
felt like some sort of a metaphor for
the loss of all of Glen Canyon I felt
like a metaphor for the ways in which we
have destroyed and dominated the
Colorado River this river this thing
you spend a year planning and talking
about Glen Canyon Dam and then you spend
a month and a half paddling to get to
Glen Canyon Dam and then it’s the day
that you’re actually getting to Glen
Canyon Dam this thing you’ve talked
about for so long and you come around
this last Bend and it’s just there the
hard way what facing the dam reminded me
of is the impermanence of our attempts
to dam and divert and dominate the
Colorado River when I consider these
canyons that we paddled through that
were all carved over millions and
millions of years by the power of the
Colorado River inch by inch into the
Colorado Plateau I feel a sense of hope
for the future of this river if we as a
society can rethink the way we manage
water if we can rethink and respect the
rivers that give us so much there is a
future in which the Colorado River can
[Music]
the boots have gone away the fish oh
[Music] you
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