If you had told me in 2019 when I was hiking and packrafting around the mouth of Labyrinth Canyon that someday I’d be exploring the canyon deeper in a much larger boat, with a man and a dog, and that I’d be starting to enjoy it, I’d have laughed in your face. Lake Powell was at that point pretty depressing, I thought.
Laughing in the face of a conservationists’ dilemma, their collective pain–my pain–this year I decided to let go and enjoy what I could of this odd situation Glen Canyon finds itself in (underwater). If I had decided during my Pacific Crest Trail through-hike to let go of the sadness of walking through burned sections of forest, and instead celebrate the char and ashes as a renewal and hike in solidarity with the forest rather than with pity for it, then I could do the same for Glen Canyon. In time it would return. Maybe not in my lifetime. But why spend my lifetime whining about it when it can be enjoyed for what it is?
What I am learning is that as the reservoir water levels drop and more of the side canyons are exposed for longer periods, healing is occurring. Animals are returning, natives are growing, floods flush out the junk left behind by boaters, and… it’s absolutely beautiful.
And these Waterworld-style approaches to where sand meets water are pretty nifty, too, in the practically psychedelic views they offer.