This Watershed Moment: Envisioning Place-Based Futures
As the Intermountain West continues to get drier and hotter, Utah’s watersheds are imperiled. The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, and the Colorado River is waning. A great change is needed. This is our watershed moment. We’re forced to ask: how can I live well in uncertain times; how can I stay in a place; how can I give back, be a good neighbor, steward, community member?
Before we drew maps with rigid political and property boundaries, watersheds informed our relation to the land and to each other. Watersheds were both a source of life and ethics. The flora and fauna that grew in a watershed influenced how people ate, built homes, and even the music they created. Who and what you lived upstream from governed how you lived on the land. In a changing climate, we are forced to remember or reimagine our connections to our watersheds to build futures we can live in sustainably, resiliently, joyfully.
Call for Submissions
We cannot bring about a future we cannot imagine. Courageous vision, it turns out, is an extremely viable strategy. So, we invited community members of these unique and endangered watersheds to invoke their imaginations. What does your watershed look like in 150 years if we answer the charge of climate change responsibly? What would it feel like? Smell like? Taste like? Sound like?
Tell us about your great great great great grandchild’s life. What could their community look like? Write us a recipe based on the food they might grow in their garden. Send us the sheet music for the folk songs they croon while cooking their dinner. Paint us a portrait of the statue they erect to honor and remember what they’ve lost. Write from the perspective of a budding juniper. Be playful. Bend genre. Have fun with form. Show us: what are the futures you imagine for your descendants?
The call for submissions deadline was December 31st, 2024.
What We’re Building Together
This Watershed Moment: Envisioning Place-Based Futures seeks to bring together voices from across Utah’s two major watersheds – the Great Basin and the Colorado River – in a collection of imaginative futures. Selected written submissions will be printed in a small booklet available for free to the public. Poster art submissions will be shared on Save Our Great Salt Lake’s social media.
This Watershed Moment: Writing Workshop Resources
Nan Seymor is a lake-facing poet, Great Salt Lake celebrant, and vigil keeper. As part of This Watershed Moment, Nan held a writing workshop supporting participants in finding and expressing their voice. As part of that workshop, Nan used these resources:
Replenished by Nan Seymor
V’ahavta by Aurora Levins Morales
This Watershed Moment: Panel Conversation
On May 30, 2024, at the Salt Lake Public Library, we convened a panel conversation to ground this call for submissions in some essential truths about the intersectionality of environmental and social thriving, the role of ethics, and the undeniable power of imagination.
Listen to recordings of the panel here, and watch the full panel conversation below:
Panelists
Dr. Bonnie Baxter, is a Professor of Biology and Director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster University.
Dr. Thomas H. Bretz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utah Valley University, where he is also the Environmental Ethics Fellow at the Center for the Study of Ethics.
Forrest S. Cuch, is an enrolled member of the Ute Indian Tribe.
Olivia Juarez is the co-host of the podcast Stay Salty: Lakefacing Stories and the public lands director for GreenLatinos.
Brooke Larsen is a journalist, writer, and storyteller based in Salt Lake City.