Dear Readers,
Only 12 more days until our vigil for Great Salt Lake at the Capitol begins!
Once again, a lake-facing community will be keeping a daily vigil on the lake’s behalf throughout the seven-week Utah State legislative session, from Tuesday, January 16th- March 1st. For the last two years, we have stayed with the lake night and day throughout the session, living on Antelope Island and calling people to gather at the receding shore. The lake called, and we came. We walked to the water, wrote laments, sang her praises, drummed, danced, made art, and listened to the sea. We composed an epic praise poem called Irreplaceable recently recommended by Terry Tempest Williams in the New York Times.
The first two vigils brought over a thousand people to the water’s edge and into direct relationship with Great Salt Lake. This year, we feel called to bring the lake closer to the people. We will be at the Capitol walking giant waves every Monday-Friday morning from 8-9 am and celebrating the myriad of species she sustains every evening from 5-6 pm. Watch for a parade of human-sized brine shrimp and great flocks of gulls and blackbirds! Since the beginning of last summer, hundreds of people, ages 4 to 84, have helped make the art. This vigil is already love writ large.
It’s also a gesture of relational repair and a chance to make our love clearly visible. While we hope to influence lawmakers to take bold enough action to bring water to the lake, the vigil is primarily an offering of presence for the lake herself. We will not leave our beloved neighbor and generous protector alone in these hours of peril. We will devote our loving presence and unflinching witness. We will gather on her behalf.
When the life of someone you love is at stake you stay with them.
Would you like to keep vigil with us from afar? Join us on Zoom for a daily morning 20-minute meditation on the lake’s behalf. Free registration and more details here. If you live in Utah, we need your help on the hill! Please schedule yourself here. And finally, here’s a place where you can offer financial support.
Thank you, friends, for keeping vigil for Great Salt Lake and other imperiled waters. Thank you for gathering on behalf of everything that matters.
love,
nan
photos by Anna Pocaro Photography
we will keep vigil leaning into the fire we are keeping vigil on a frigid night aside a receding shore in the silence of the morning from the quiet homes and campers we are sitting with the lake and keeping vigil from the saddle to the peak along the traces of the epochs counting emptied nests of pelicans in exile we are keeping vigil desecraters, dam-builders, developers— beneath the shadows of your smelters we will keep vigil against diverting and dredging against your plumes of poison against your inland ports from the floor of the great basin to the headwaters of the Bear for all that is irreplaceable until lake sovereignty is assured until life flows freely into the north arm until great wings darken the skies again until you cease to do harm we will keep vigil.
Thank you Katharine! It will be beautiful to sit with you in loving silence for the waters. I feel the power of it flowing already.
so wise...meditation time for all, no matter where we are.
holding space and taking notes from my River.
love, Katharine