The construction of Glen Canyon Dam was a great tragedy, a violent act that should never have happened. So unnatural, unjust, immoral, destructive. It wasn't necessary to bury the thousands of ancient antiquities and ruins, to bury the many beautiful canyons and natural features, to destroy the very thing so many people hold of such great value, and to prevent peoples everywhere from experiencing them.

Having spent so much time in the canyons, I deeply feel the atrocities that have been committed. To me and to millions of others the great inundation was another holocaust. And in contrasting this period with the ages before it, this was the cruelest act of all. Even "manifest destiny" left its impacts, but none were as violent or total as this one.

I look back at the region's history. While our pioneer ancestors endured hard times in "taming the land" and "making the desert blossom like a rose," they in so doing closely adapted themselves to the land and left their heritage in so doing. Today, we live our lives enmeshed with that of our ancestors as well as with our contemporaries. We often find the old days and the old ways still of great value and very satisfying. We like it the way it was.

Remembering My Pioneer Heritage

As a history buff. I've tried to compensate for that "yearning-for-the-past" feeling that continually follows me. I do it by tracing my heritage back in time. It's a great joy to follow the same old horse trails they rode, to boat down the same rivers they rowed, and to search out my kins' grave sites lost out there in the desert somewhere. Then I get an inkling of the heritage our ancestors left us.

Of all of the canyons, the Glen Canyon and the Escalante Canyon played such an inspiring part. Before the great inundation, these canyons were heaven-like and I felt wilderness and beauty there. And that beauty stuck with me.

There are beautiful meandering rivers, rock cliffs, cliff dwellings, monoliths, fossils, dinosaur tracks, petrified trees, deep winding canyons, inaccessible mesas, sand dunes, lakes and ponds, burial mounds, and rock writings that make up the canyons. There are upwarps and downwarps, anticlines and monoclines. There are thousands of colored erosional forms and many other forms of beauty.

And upstream at its source, there is The Hells Backbone, a sharp ridge with a bridge built over a crevice in the rock. The precipitous walls on both sides drop hundreds of feet to the floor below. Death Hollow on one side and another deep canyon on the other. For a number of years, my head wrangler Reeves Baker, as a kid, carried mail and provisions by pack horse from Escalante to Boulder. He left a beautiful heritage.

I remember, years ago, Grandma telling me stories of the colonizing experiences she had in Escalante and how beautiful she thought the country was. She spoke of how hard it was to survive and to make a living. She talked of her own kin and friends who came to settle that land. Old family names---the Spencers, the Allens, the Lees, the Roundys, the Woolseys, and a host of other families---she vividly recalled.

She told me of the Indians that frequented the area. Of those that lived there at the time of settlement. Of how the Indians exchanged their land to the Mormons for "horses and beeves." She told me of Navajos coming to trade by crossing the Colorado River and walking over the Kaiparowits Plateau to Escalante.

I read many stories about the country too. Indians were harassing settlers and stealing livestock in the southern and central parts of the state. Lands had been taken from the Indians---so there was some justification for the marauding. The Mormons decided to take the offensive, and so began the Black Hawk War. A cavalry contingent was formed, and the small army tailed some Indians up the Paria, across the divide, and then down to a beautiful valley of the Escalante. (The party named it "Potato Valley" because of wild tubers growing there.) After following the Indians for many miles, the cavalrymen gave up and turned back and awaited their pay.

In 1869 and again in 1871-72, Major John Wesley Powell made adventurous and scientific trips down the Green and Colorado Rivers. Powell loved naming things and his names stuck: Cataract Canyon, Glen Canyon, the Henry Mountains the Dirty Devil River, the Escalante River, and the Kaiparowits Plateau.

Then in 1871, Jacob Hamblin, the legendary Mormon Indian missionary got a job from Powell carrying supplies by packtrain to the mouth of the Dirty Devil to meet the river party's second boating party. The Hamblin party followed up the Paria and then down into Potato Valley by packtrain. Hamblin assumed the Escalante headwaters was the Dirty Devil River. So he descended the river for about 50 miles fighting quicksand much of the way. He too gave up and returned to Kanab as he hopelessly didn't know where he was.

In the spring of 1875, the settlement of Escalante began with the arrival of men work parties. And the following year, the brethren brought their wives and families. And over the years, in working their lands, they accomplished many of their goals. Escalante still stands.

Well, that's part of the human history, and our folk left us a great heritage and turned over their lands to a new generation. The land's care is now in our charge.

Destroying the Legacy

And look at what we have done! We've squandered the lands and the rivers to which our ancestors were so dedicated. And when our own generation passes what then do we have to pass on to our kids and their kids and the many future generations to come?

During my boating years on the Colorado River I often camped at Music Temple, or slightly upstream from Hidden Passage, and for two nights at Forbidding Canyon so that we could spend the full day hiking to Rainbow Bridge. Favorite places all. And I watched it all go.

There came the destructive and rising waters in 1963. Devastation all about. The waters were rising fast, now to the Hole-in-the Rock gully where the Mormons had crossed the Colorado River in 1879 on their six month journey to Bluff. I camped for the night at the Escalante. I was very morose and angry that night; things would never be the same again. "Lake Foul" was too much. There was so much destroyed, and the river quit flowing. I had a good talk with myself most of the night.

Next morning we hiked to the Cathedral in the Desert. Then I announced to my intrepid group that I'd be moving my operations to the isolated town of Escalante, an historic, small, dusty town that lay upstream some one hundred miles as the bends of the river go. "Upstream is pure wilderness!" Once I had announced it, I felt much better. I moved my family to Escalante the next spring.

The glorious days I spent in Glen and Escalante Canyons will ever be with me. Living and traveling through this country wasn't always easy, but it was a spiritual and supportive world to me. If heaven is like that (supposing we have the fortune of reaching heaven), we're in luck.

Abbey and I used to play that self-inflicting-pain game of postmortem. What could have been done to prevent the dam? And then we asked, what can be done now to remove it? His answer was the Monkey Wrench Gang. Required reading!

But a postmortem is necessary. The role of politics played a great part in that tragedy. Though there were many well-meaning and honest leaders that truly thought their actions would indeed benefit society, I believe there were a few leaders---political prostitutes and sell-outs---that permitted the disaster.

It would be hoped that in our democratic society our leaders would rule mildly and beneficially for the good of all, but we do not have that assurance. Our leaders are often caught up in forces, dictated by wealth and power, that restrict their choices and often make them do unjust acts. Glen Canyon's demise was such an act.

There was no justice. Back then, we had but little real strength. Our small inarticulate Friends of Glen Canyon group and the pleas of river outfitters had no effect. The heart-rending letters of citizens had no effect. The leaders arrogantly took advantage of our weakness with their superior political might. Yet... we were close to beating them. All we needed was the collective support of the nation's environmental groups, but many of those were a bit timid.

As the waters of the reservoir encroached into Rainbow Bridge National Monument, a number of us were very concerned as the law says the monument would be protected from impairment. I joined the suit with David Brower's Friends of the Earth and the Wasatch Mountain Club to see that the law to preserve the monument was followed. Others also expressed such concerns, yet many environmental groups shrugged it off.

The Navajo people also brought suit to protect the sacredness of Rainbow Bridge from reservoir waters that intruded. U.S. District Court Judge Willis Ritter agreed with us and ordered the waters out. However the Appeals Court overturned the decision. Political power and wealth again won out. It should have been a legislative matter, not a judicial one. Justice was not served.

When violence and injustice are present both human and physical events are largely shaped by it. Natural retribution inevitably follows, and retribution takes many paths. Because of the dam, many side effects have become of major importance. Excessive evaporation, an increase in salt content, and an increase in reservoir and river pollution are but a few of the problems. There are many others.

Utah's Congressman Cannon has recently tried to introduce a legislative measure that would muzzle both the government and the public from gaining information about the consequences of the dam and reservoir. His end run would stifle free speech and the necessary discussions needed for the collection of hard data. How, pray tell, can one discover "objective" standards of justice without acquiring a full knowledge of the pros and cons of the issue? The public needs a voice. Otherwise, there is no sure guides that justice will prevail. Cannon should cease and desist.

The Glen Canyon Institute has now been organized and its aim is to bring down the reservoir. The national Sierra Club supports it. These groups are dedicated to gaining the needed information necessary to present to the public and government leaders. Their influence is growing rapidly. But with their increasing effectiveness other powerful leaders are marshalling the opposition forces of power and wealth against them.

But in the final analysis, Nature itself knows best. Edicts and some laws will never be strong enough to counter the unwritten laws of Nature for long. There are natural laws that override their decrees. It's a matter of universal justice too. We should no longer be entrapped in the meshes of our leaders' tentacles. And we must condemn leaders who seek to gratify their own immediate desires and who continually do the bidding for special interests and the rich.

I'm now awaiting a "great resurrection" of that beautiful land and flowing river. I would like to row the river once again and to hike again the canyon's many enchanting glens and grottos, to again meditate in the confines of the Cathedral in the Desert, and to explore the beauty of the canyons. I'd like to lead my group up Hidden Passage and to camp at Music Temple as John Wesley Powell, Edna Fridley and Vaughn Short did.

I'd like to laugh and make plans with the likes of my dear old friend Abbey. He knew the canyons could come back if given a chance. I hear him now:

"...I say, give Nature a little time. In five years, at most in ten, the sun and wind and storms will cleanse and sterilize the repellent mess. The inevitable floods will soon remove all that does not belong within the canyons. Fresh green willows and tamarisk, box elder and redbud will reappear; and the ancient drowned cottonwoods (noble monuments to themselves) will be replaced by young of their kind. With the renewal of plant life will come the insects, the birds, the lizards and snakes, the mammals. Within a generation - thirty years - I predict the river and canyons will bear a decent resemblance to their former selves. Within the lifetime of our children Glen Canyon and the living river, heart of the canyonlands, will be restored to us. The wilderness will again belong to the people."

[Edward Abbey and Phillip Hyde, Slickrock, p.69]