One of the most interesting presentations I ever attended was put on by the Glen Canyon Institute in SLC in 2008 or so. It was a centered around a slide show of what the canyon looked like before the dam, and had a lot of the usual suspects among those who wanted the lake to disappear. There were a lot of students, and a lot of old people who knew (or felt connected to) the canyon before the lake. There were some scientists and poets, that kind of thing. And of course a lot of that is compelling, but only tells part of the story, though an important part.
Anyway, the best part of that is that for lunch I was sitting between Katie Lee and Ken Sleight, two of the oldest of the "drain the lake" icons, and boy were they interesting to talk with, especially Katie Lee. She must have been 90 or so at the time, but sharp as a tack and as passionate as ever. We had a great conversation, probably lasted close to an hour. She was still an emotional defender of Glen Canyon, a place she knew and loved in the 1950s... I asked her if she'd ever been back since the dam, and she had but only once in the mid-60s... I explained to her that I'm sure I would have loved the old Glen Canyon as she saw it, but my first experiences there were with Lake Powell, and that while different, was the reality I knew, and a place I loved too, perhaps as much as she did of a place that no longer exists. She got that, but for her it came down to the idea that something great was taken away and something she loved. She said we all have a special place, and that was hers. My take was that Lake Powell is my special place.
...and more importantly, that things change, sometimes in ways you don't want them to, but in those changes new perspectives are forged, and they can be equally valid, equally impassioned. She didn't buy that in the case of Glen Canyon. So we talked about different examples of change, some for the better, some for not... In the end, for her, she felt she lost her closest friend, and Lake Powell was a sad reminder of that. And I told her I was sorry about that, but I've got a friend in Lake Powell, and for me, the access it provides to hard to reach places, the beauty it has, and some of the economic benefits make it a friend to many other people. At the same time, I agreed with her that if they had to do it all again, I would say don't build the dam. But the dam is here now, and while much is lost, much is gained, and let's work with that as a baseline. And to consider that if the lake were drained, a whole generation or more would feel exactly as she did in 1963, and is that any more or less fair? And for her, it was the intrinsic value of the environmental setting that was lost, almost as if it were a living thing by itself.
I had to respect her perspective, mainly because I shared some of it, and I think by the end she got where I was coming from. We enjoyed a good lunch together.
Anyway, Katie died at the end of 2017 at 98, but I always sent her a Christmas card after that encounter in 2008, and she'd reply with something funny to say. A really interesting woman, and glad we crossed paths...
