I write today from the receding shoreline of a great water body, one of the world’s many imperiled saline seas. Deprived of vital inflows for decades by diversion and overconsumption, Great Salt Lake is currently fighting for her life. This is the 37th of a 47 day and night community vigil with the lake, a vigil we are keeping in correspondence with the 2023 Utah State legislative session. 

The whole system is in an active state of collapse.

Last winter, at the lake’s request, I came here to listen and to call forth others. During our first six-week vigil, hundreds of people gathered. Together we created a collective poem called irreplaceable, over 2500 lines composed of over 400 individual voices. The size of the poem is a call for the lake’s full restoration. The poem is both a prayer of praise and a location, a place where we can gather to love the lake together. We meet in grief as well. Praise and lament are two names for love and are necessary companions. 

During the first month of this year’s vigil, hundreds more people have come to Antelope Island. They come to walk and weep and write; they come to be with the lake. When they leave here, they go forth to bear witness.

Presently, I am alone here. A fierce winter storm is coming and the camper is rattling. I have been warned. Nonetheless, I stay to keep watch and to listen. When the life of someone you love is at stake, you stay with them. I am here to keep our great neighbor company through perilous hours.

Through the window of this camper I can see great saline reefs dying of exposure. Last year, this bay was still a flawless pancake. Some sunsets rendered it a pool of molten gold. This year, despite a bountiful season of snow, the once complete circle appears mangled, scarred with dead reefs who have been the platform of all life here. Microbialites cannot survive without water and the birds cannot survive without the brine flies and crustaceans sheltered by microbialites. The whole system is in an active state of collapse.

The lake is dying and crying “I thirst.” As of now, we have failed to answer. The only response that could matter is water. 

The fates of ten million citizens of the air depend on this singular lake. Great Salt Lake is an essential refuge along the Pacific flyway, and a seasonal home for over 330 species of birds. 10,000,000 individual lives at stake, a number perhaps too staggering to imagine. Nonetheless, let’s try. On a recent walk along this shore, three friends and I counted the bodies of 425 dead grebes, 8 seagulls, and one swallow. It was heart-breaking to number them amidst the stench of death. I became dizzy at times, walking slowly but compelled to count fast by the frequency of corpses. There were so many. Eared grebes leave this earth with their faces to the sky, pale bellies exposed and short legs turned out, their dark crested heads turned gently to one side. Their final posture is reminiscent of a child in a crib. In a near possible future, the one in which we fail to save this lake from ourselves, the body count could increase exponentially, reaching a number roughly 24,000 times our recent count. Where will all those corpses lie?

For decades, we have been over consuming the lake’s inflows, primarily through agriculture. We also extract water from the lake body to mine magnesium and other minerals. Additionally, we have remained relentlessly committed to suburbs full of insatiable lawns.

Meanwhile we continue to dump our waste into this terminal basin. The largest open-pit mine in the world, visible from space, is adjacent to the lake. Kennecott Copper’s 1,215 foot high smelter smokestack looms on the South shore. As the protection of this water body is withdrawn and more lakebed is exposed, we are left to reckon with our own poisons. Heavy metals, including mercury and arsenic, are already becoming toxic storms. If we do not return water to the lake, these storms will become perpetual and apocalyptic. One scientist recently warned us from the Capitol steps that the consequences of failure to meet this emergency will be “genuinely biblical.” And yet, we are adhering to this dismal trajectory.

Recently, I traveled from the lake to testify at the Capitol while another community member kept vigil. I went to speak on behalf of a resolution. Non-partisan by nature and elegant in its simplicity, the legislation would have established a statewide goal for the lake-level. Great Salt Lake currently sits at 4189 feet above sea-level, which is nine feet shy of the minimum viable level by every scientific measure. The resolution would have established a common goal of a 4198 foot lake-level. The bill would have done nothing to fund or enforce the goal, but it was both the least we could do legally and also an essential first step.

We didn’t do it. Inexplicably, the legislators voted against it along party lines. I cannot pretend I wasn’t devastated. I had dared to hope they would do the right and obvious thing. I felt and still feel a sense of betrayal. Two weeks have passed and there is a dearth of legislation that would directly bring water to the lake. The other meaningful bill is being stalled in the rules committee. With less than two weeks left in the session, lawmakers do not appear to be serious about this emergency or prepared to make even small sacrifices.

“We will not lose the lake on our watch,” they said. The truth in this statement is that they are not here watching. If they were, they would be able to weigh the difference between the state of this bay between this year and last. If they were here, they could count the dead grebes.

This is why we are keeping vigil. We will not let the peril of this great body go unnoticed. We will not let her die alone or unloved.

Just before senators killed the bill, I offered a prayer on the floor. It came to me at the camper during our daily lake-facing community meditation. The lake asked me to take the prayer to the Capitol and so I did. Although not acted upon by lawmakers, the words are on the record and I will continue to pray them.

Betrayed by the blue suits and abandoned by halls of power, we are all the more devoted. According to Einstein, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And so we rise to meet this challenge through alternate channels. We sing, we drum, we pray. We keep vigil.

We gather to bear witness to her beauty. We gather to grieve. We gather to create beacons of possibility. We gather to increase our tenderness towards brine shrimp, microbialites, and winged citizens of the air. We gather to carry each other through spells of despair. We gather to revere all that is vital and alive.

We all live in relationship to what is irreplaceable. We have a sacred obligation to attend to these relationships, to listen to beyond-human life forms, landforms, and water-bodies.

Though the window of possibility is closing, it is not yet closed. The lake loves her life. She is fierce and life is surprising. And we are a lake-facing people, aligned with her on behalf of all life. Everything we do matters. In the face of this crisis, who will we become?