“If you kick nature, it’ll kick you back.”
In the film “Apausalypse,” which premiered this week, a voice repeats this mantra as a horse stares directly at the camera, mane dusting white in a barren wind.
I wrote in 2019 pleading that we stop the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake. As I’ve watched relentless diversions suck it dry these last two years, I’ve found it difficult to believe in the lake’s ability to kick back. As Jaimi Butler and Bonnie K. Baxter write in Catalyst Magazine, “even lakes are not immortal.” The Great Salt Lake is dying under our noses.
Yet, we somehow believe that it will never leave us, as if the lake is the salty crown jewel on some kind of birthright. With Lake Owens in California as a prime example, we know it is possible to watch shimmering bodies of water crumble to dust due to excessive diversions. As we hear from scientists again and again, this could be devastating to our already dismal air quality and the ecosystem at large.
But it is not too late to save our health, heritage and wildlife. With many groups recommending strategies for change, including Sageland Collaborative’s needs report and Great Salt Lake Advisory Council’s report, there is hope.
I hope for a future spangled by sunlight dancing on the lake’s surface. For thousands of years, millions of migratory birds have scanned the arid landscape for this desert gem, descending when they spot it to replenish their exhausted bodies.
I continue this pilgrimage, gliding my paddle board into the lake’s glassy sunset when I need peace. This is home.
Will we watch it slip away, or will we kick a little?
Sarah Ann Woodbury, Salt Lake City