Water Archives - Wild About Utah

August 12, 2024August 11, 2024

A Place for Growth

I was raised in Laramie, WY, which boasts many qualities making it a pleasant place to live. It’s got a safe hometown feel, cool summers, a relatively close proximity to Colorado’s front range, and access to outdoor recreation opportunities such as the geologically magnificent Vedauwoo. However, Gem City is extremely dry and windy, making gardening of any sort challenging. I say this not to bash on my Alma Mater, but to explain why, when I moved to Logan for graduate school I was captivated by the astonishing climate, notably its ability to support gardening!

It was August, 2018 when I first arrived to Logan in my ’98 Tacoma packed to the brim with what I’d need for this next stage of life, and of course my Black Lab, Josi. I vividly remember emerging from Logan Canyon to a view of Cache Valley and being stunned by the lush surroundings. Later that day I discovered an apricot tree in a grass strip next to my new residence; orange/yellow apricots littered the branches and smushed ones lined the sidewalk below. As I casually picked and gobbled a few of the delectable treats, I realized there was a possibly for growing fruit here that I had had little experience with thus far in my life.

Naturally, filled with excitement and intrigue about being able to grow produce, I went to the local Anderson’s Seed and Garden with my visiting sister and bought raspberry, blackberry, and grape starts; as well as a small peach, pear, nectarine, and cherry tree. By the end of that day and with dirt on about every square inch of our bodies, we stood back and admired the newly planted additions, not sure whether they were planted correctly or if they’d survive the first winter. Well, 6 years later and miraculously, all the plants are bearing fruit, despite the constant battle with aphids, over and under watering, and the local Mule Deer thinking the leafy foliage is as tasty as the fruit the trees will produce.

This all brings us to the best part, enjoying nature’s candy! There is a wonderful sense of delight when I pick a peach from my self-planted, backyard tree and bite into the juicy, sweet meat. So, if you are like I was and have no experience growing, well, anything, don’t let that stop you from going to your local nursery and giving it a try. It’s a great way to take advantage of the beautiful climate the great state of Utah offers!

If by chance you find yourself with more fruit than you can manage, make sure to contact USU’s Harvest Rescue program who may be able to salvage leftover fruit and make it accessible to others.

This is Dr. Joseph Kozlowski, and I am wild about Utah!

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Joseph Kozlowski, Photographer, Used by Permission
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver Friend Weller, UPR.org, and Anderson, Howe, Wakeman.
Text: Joseph Kozlowski, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Joseph Kozlowski

Additional Reading:

Joseph (Joey) Kozlowski’s pieces on Wild About Utah: https://wildaboututah.org/author/joseph-kowlowski/

USU Harvest Rescue, Center for Community Engagement, Christensen Office of Social Action and Sustainability, Utah State University, https://www.usu.edu/social-action-sustainability/get-involved/cache-gleaning

Anderson Seed & Garden, https://andersonseedandgarden.com

March 20, 2023September 11, 2023

Atmospheric Rivers

I love rivers, especially atmospheric rivers, thanks Hawaii! Poor California. Will it ever end! As atmospheric rivers continue to destroy California, our mountains get the leftovers, which I’ve enjoyed immensely as an avid Nordic skier.

Having attended the USU Spring Runoff Conference, and the Northern Utah Water conference last week, driving streets which have become snow tunnels, an epic year of snowfall is all too apparent, possibly eclipsing the ‘011 epic year.

The Great Salt Lake welcomes every drop, while our cities brace for potential floods, a repeat of ’83 when Salt Lake City’s State Street became a favorite kayak route and trout fishery! Soil moisture is being replenished which is far more favorable to aquafer recharge and agriculture. Some reservoirs are even releasing water to prevent catastrophic overflow. We find ourselves filling sandbags anticipating the worst.

Atmospheric rivers, “giant conveyor belts of water in the sky”, cause the moisture-rich “Pineapple Express” storm systems that come from the Pacific Ocean, especially Hawaii, several times annually and are more common in the winter. From October 2018 to spring 2019, there were 47 atmospheric rivers, 12 of which were rated strong or extreme, in Washington, Oregon and California. In some parts of the world, changes in atmospheric humidity and heat caused by climate change are expected to increase the intensity and frequency of extreme weather and flood events caused by atmospheric rivers. This is expected to be especially prominent in the Western United States and Canada.

Atmospheric rivers have a central role in the global water cycle. On any given day, atmospheric rivers account for over 90% of the north-south water vapor transport. They are a major factor in extreme precipitation events that cause severe flooding in many mid-latitude, westerly coastal regions of the world. Equally, the absence of atmospheric rivers has been linked to the occurrence of droughts in several parts of the world.

Our Great Salt Lake has risen about 1 1/2 feet since it’s 2022 historic low. The LDS church is donating 20 thousand acre feet, about 0.3 % of what’s needed. They are hoping others will follow suite. Another 7 million acre feet of water is needed to create the once thriving salt lake ecosystem according to The Great Salt Lake Strike Team, a combination of two Utah research universities and three Utah agencies. They suggest water donations are one of the more cost-effective and efficient solutions for getting water back into the lake. Donations could help reduce this significant deficit, since human consumption accounts for about two-thirds of the lake’s decline.

Here in Cache Valley, our high school students will be competing with each other in “Saving the Great Salt Lake” to see which school can most effectively engage their schools and communities in reducing water consumption. Cash prizes will be awarded to all participating schools, along with a tree to plant on their school grounds or another public space. Contact jackisblue49@yahoo.com for further information.

This is Jack Greene for Bridgerland Audubon, and you guessed it-I’m wild about Utah and it’s Great Salty Lake!

Credits:
Ponderosa Pine Pictures: Courtesy Pixabay, David Mark, Contributor https://www.pixabay.com/
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://npr.org/ and Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, and Jack Greene, Author, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

Greene, Jack, The Great Salt Lake, Wild About Utah, April 11, 2016, https://wildaboututah.org/great-salt-lake/

Greene, Jack. 2020. I Love Snow. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/i-love-snow/

Larese-Casanova, Mark. 2014. Utah’s Rich Skiing History. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/utahs-rich-skiing-history/

Liberatore, Andrea. 2011. Snowflakes. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/snowflakes/

Strand, Holly. 2009. A Utah Skier’s Snow Lexicon. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/a-utah-skiers-snow-lexicon/

December 13, 2021March 12, 2022

Erosion Made My Favorite Places

Muddy Creek Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer — Bluff of Little Flat Top
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Muddy Creek
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

North Fork Pleasant Creek Terracing
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Blackburn Draw
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Brendan Wenzel says the inspiration for his picture book “A Stone Sat Still” was a familiar boulder nestled in a tidal inlet near his family’s home. This stone was a dining place, a perch, a tool, and a landmark, but dependably there day after day, year after year. When I shared this book as a writing workshop launch with fellow educators, it drew recollections of sandboxes, rock collections, garden pavers, mantle stones, stacked-stone cairns keeping us on the right trail, and deeper connections to fathers. I wrote about how stones definitely don’t sit still when I am around. When my father would take us fishing, my brothers and I would most likely be skipping every flat rock we could find across the lake’s surface instead of manning our poles. Even now I can’t resist rolling a moqui marble down desert slickrock or plucking up a river rock to chase scurrying stonefly larva beneath.

Dr. Eric Newell, director of experiential learning at Edith Bowen Laboratory School and summertime river rafting guide, wrote about the secrets stones hold for him: “I like to pick up rounded river rocks, turn them gently in my fingertips, feel the smooth contours, and wonder where they journeyed from to this resting place—how long did it take for the eons to shape and polish them? And what would rivers be without stones?—the meticulous ways the currents stack and sort boulders to sand grains by size, coming to understand that every wave on the surface of the river is created by stones beneath—and the metaphor that provides for seeing and understanding children, adults, and even myself.”

Mountains, boulders, stones, cobbles, gravels, pebbles, sand grains, silt, mud. If the water is muddy or the wind is dusty, we know erosion is happening. It forms valleys, smooths jagged rocks, and carves unexpected slot canyons in the desert. It also causes black blizzards and landslides. According to Mark Milligan of the Utah Geologic Survey, the early decades of the 1900s saw the Civilian Conservation Corps setting to work not only building canals and roads, but contour terracing to stall mountainside erosion here in Utah. There is a sign on Skyline Drive in the Manti-LaSal National Forest that reminds us that those CCC boys were digging horizontal trenches above our cities well into the 1950s.

Many people equate erosion with the destructive forces that wear down earth. Yet, in her book titled “Erosion,” Terry Tempest Williams pairs eroding with evolving. She wrote, “Water freezes and shatters stone; rocks fall from the force of gravity; new rapids appear in rivers. Storms gather and floods roar through dry washes, cutting and scouring a wider channel…” We have water, ice, wind, and time to thank for the erosion that created Natural Bridges and Arches, Coral Pink Sand Dunes and Goblin Valley, and Muddy Creek and Blackburn Draw.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I’m wild about erosion’s role in shaping Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
Text: Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Courtesy Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Atwood, Genevieve. Geology of Utah. https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/g/GEOLOGY.shtml

Manti-LaSal National Forest Visitor Guide. https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5370798.pdf

Milligan, Mark. What Are Those Lines on the Mountain? From Bread Lines to Erosion-Control Lines. Utah Geologic Survey Notes, v. 42 no. 1, January 2010. https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/erosion-control-lines-on-the-mountains/

Olsen, Beth. Utah’s CCCs: The Conservators’ Medium for Young Men, Nature, Economy, and Freedom. Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 3, 1994 by Utah State History. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume62_1994_number3/s/163708

Oskin, Becky. Mars on Earth: How Utah’s Fantastical Moqui Marbles Formed. 2014. https://www.livescience.com/47936-how-moqui-marbles-form.html

Wenzel, Brendan. A Stone Sat Still. 2019. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11LB4A-pjI

Williams, Terry Tempest. Erosion: Essays of Undoing. 2019. New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books. https://www.amazon.com/Erosion-Undoing-Terry-Tempest-Williams/dp/0374280061

September 6, 2021March 12, 2022

In Equal Measure to Our Fears

Doubt is a tricky thing. It’s neither good nor bad, it is simply the axis upon which the scales of hope and fear balance. It is the prerequisite of faith, belief, disbelief, and nihilism, all equal paths of equal circumstance. It is the fork in the road which Berra told us to take all the same. In Equal Measure to Our Fears

When I go outside, breathe in the thick charcoal air, see the dribbling water in the once-mighty streams, and hear more stories of growing sickness, I’ll admit that I have doubts which edge on fear. I doubt that this is the last year of record-breaking heat. I doubt that this is the last year of record-breaking drought. I doubt that this is the last year of record-breaking hospitalizations. Such doubt can make you feel hopeless, powerless, and just plain sad. What have we done? How did we get here? Wasn’t this all avoidable? It takes me some time, then, to remember to move on from that doubt and to take a path, but to never forget the place in which drove me to rest and reflect. Though it can feel like a good place of respite, a shady tree to rest one’s laurels or wallow and say uncle to what we’ve sown, there’s still work which can be done. To rest in doubt is to be a bump on a log and not the tree itself. I remember the lessons of the humble tree.

The tree lives because of doubt’s prodigy of conjoined fear and hope. We must also harness both in equal form and measure in order to grow, and to live. In seeing the unified balance there is motion. The tree’s roots reach downwards, clinging to the earth in fear. In this way the world is its. The tree’s branches reach skywards, opening to the sky in hope. In this way it is the world’s. The tree’s roots drink water and move the earth: from fear comes motion and matter. The tree’s leaves drink fire and move the air: from hope comes life and form. Without fear, we would shrivel. Without hope, we would rot. Without fear, we would fall. Without hope, we would suffocate. To be subject to hope, you must make fear a part of you. Latch onto it, and feel that this shade of love is life given purpose. Then you may reach upwards and see that you do so only because you contain that which you cling to.

The fear I feel when I breathe in our Utah air, see green lawns, and hear new numbers on the radio is necessary for hope, and both are only possible because of the blessings of doubt because the future is not fixed. And yet, there is another hidden secret to fear and hope, and that is action. The tree is not a static being. Like all of us, it is in a constant state of becoming. We may be where we are, but where we are does not mean we must remain. Trees grow over boulders, thrive upon cliffs, and so can we. We can move on from La Brean doubt on what shall be. We can continue our journey in becoming. Given this, we then have a question in which to answer for ourselves: the question though is not what shall we become, but towards which light do we choose to work towards in equal measure to our fears?

I’m Patrick Kelly, and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy US National Park Service, Neal Herbert, Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & © J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin. https://upr.org/
Text: Patrick Kelly, Director of Education, Stokes Nature Center, https://www.logannature.org
Included Links: Patrick Kelly & Lyle Bingham, Webmaster, WildAboutUtah.org

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Posts by Patrick Kelly

Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon, https://www.logannature.org/

The Indomitable Juniper, Canyonlands National Park, US National Parks Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/cany/learn/nature/utahjuniper.htm (Image source)