It looked almost exactly like
Phil Hyde’s photograph taken in 1964, a year after Glen
Canyon Dam began backing up the Colorado River — a seven-year
event.
Hyde’s photo revealed a stunning waterfall
in a giant amphitheater with a narrow, almost slot opening at top,
perfectly named “Cathedral in the Desert.” Eventually it
disappeared, drowned in 150 feet of reservoir, coyly named Lake
Powell. But drought can perform miracles, and we had Ed
Abbey’s words to remind us that the cathedral and the rest of
inundated Glen Canyon weren’t gone at all; they were, he
insisted, in “liquid storage.”
He was more right than he
knew. Two years ago, when the drought had already pulled the
reservoir level down by 90 feet, I traveled to Lake Powell with
Rich Ingebretsen, the president of the Glen Canyon Institute, which
wants to breach Glen Canyon Dam. We went by boat from Hall’s
Crossing to the “Escalante Arm” of Lake Powell, then turned left up
a narrow side canyon to the place we thought the cathedral should
be. We guessed right.
It was still difficult to gauge our
location from old photos because we were floating 60 feet above the
old canyon floor. But as we made a tight turn to the left, we
spotted the top of the waterfall that once marked the upstream
terminus of the cathedral, just four or five feet beneath us, still
submerged. We were that tantalizingly close.
We wondered,
as we reluctantly departed later that day, if this was as close as
we’d ever come.
This spring, drought brought us an
answer. Lake Powell had dropped another 60 feet, and in April,
Ingebretsen and I traveled again to the cathedral by motorboat, the
very form of transportation that would become obsolete if the
reservoir ever runs dry. So there we were, in a $20,000 rented
motorboat, in order to see one of the most stunning sights on
Earth, one that no one had viewed in almost 40 years.
It
took an hour to go from Hall’s Crossing to the mouth of the
Escalante River, and then up Clear Creek to a point where the
canyon appeared to close in. This time there was a slot at the back
of the chamber, and there it was above us, the waterfall, flowing
freely as spring runoff cascaded over the sculptured lip of the
dropoff and spattered into a pool, 50 feet below. We parked the
boat and walked in.
The dark desert varnish around the
waterfall had not faded in 40 years. The striations that were so
clearly visible in Hyde’s images from 1964, were just as
sharply defined. We looked at each other, almost in disbelief, and
we found ourselves speaking in whispered tones.
Ingebretsen said softly, “This is where Hyde stood… this is where
(David) Brower stood.” And it was still there, just waiting for
Nature to expose the rock and for us to return.
We noted
the seeps oozing from the canyon walls and a hint of green around
those wet places in the Navajo sandstone. Nature was already at
work. From time to time, we came upon an old beer can or piece of
rope or lost thermos cup, detritus of the motorized recreation in
the holy chamber. But what surprised us was how little garbage
there was.
The Cathedral in the Desert, without any help
from us, was, in the most tranquil way imaginable, restoring
itself. All it needed from us was time. And there’s the rub.
If this year’s heavy snowpack in the Rocky
Mountains turns out to be an aberration, and if, as a result, the
reservoir continues to shrink, today’s fierce economic and
environmental arguments about the dam become irrelevant. The
cathedral will re-emerge without any help from us.
But as
we motored away from the cathedral, we were already aware that this
year’s spring runoff will be massive, and that the reservoir
will rise at least 30 feet, perhaps even 50 feet or more. If the
scientists are wrong, or the timing is off by many years, 2005 may
have been Cathedral in the Desert’s one brief moment to see
again the light of day.
Already, in early May, houseboats
floated above it as the reservoir steadily rose. For now, I take
comfort in knowing that a cathedral really is down there, “in
liquid storage,” waiting for an enlightened future to let her shine
again.
Jim Stiles is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is the editor of the Canyon Country
Zephyr, published six times a year in Moab,
Utah.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
