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Monday, November 18, 2013

Glen Canyon Dam and God


Earlier this month, I took a trip to Las Vegas to report on a story based out of there. I suppose I could have flown, but flights out of Durango are absurd: It would have taken nearly 9 hours by plane, assuming my flights were on time and I made my connections. Driving takes about the same amount of time, and takes one through some of the most spectacular country in the world, so drive I did. And, by pure chance, I drove through Page, Arizona during the peak of the Bureau of Reclamation's High Flow Experiment, during which unusually large amounts of water are released from Lake Powell in order to simulate natural floods in the Grand Canyon.

It was pretty cool to see. I went out on the crazy bridge (the highest/longest of its kind when it was built back in the early 1960s), and simply gazed out at the dam, letting the roar of the water blasting out serenade me into a tranquil state of awe. It inspired some thoughts about my sort of obsession with gargantuan infrastructure, about drought and climate change and, yes, about God. I wrote about it for High Country News. Read it.