As I’ve been advocating for Great Salt Lake over the years, I’m often and eagerly asked “What can I do to help save the Great Salt Lake?” and in my mind’s eye, I can’t help but see Hamlet’s visage as he grapples with life’s most profound questions in the “to be, or not to be” soliloquy.

When I started on this article, I found myself writing about all of the typical things: the heavy metals in the dust storms blowing through our communities and those particles settling into our snowpack, shortening our winters, the near collapse of the ecosystem last year and the legislative progress that we have, and have not made. I wrote about the American Pelican colony, once 20,000 strong, that was absent from Gunnison Island this year, raising the question of what we might call an island that is no longer surrounded by water. I considered the causeway, its breach and its berm and wondered if this Lake is still Great now that we’ve divided it in half, completely disconnecting the north arm from the south arm. This division, I hope will be temporary. I was writing about all of these things, but something was amiss.

The question was plaguing me, “What can I do to help save Great Salt Lake?” I found myself utterly distraught, paralyzed all of a sudden in the face of the many challenges surrounding the Lake, and our watershed, and the drought, and the fires, the floods, the unhoused, the hungry, development, zoning, schools, parks. Too much! Shut down!! What can I do? “Ay, there’s the rub.”

The common answers are promoting calls to action – emails to our legislators and rallies on Capitol Hill, marching protests, petitions and social media posts. Yes, all of these are important… AND they all focus on calling someone else to action. It may just be that the most effective solutions come from our own personal action. What does it look like when I hold myself accountable for the lake or the canyon? What does it look like when you hold yourself accountable for the unhoused or the hungry? What does it look like when we take personal accountability for these things? Not all of them, but one. What if we were to pick just one, and take responsibility for it? I wonder if it is in this personal responsibility that we find water for the Lake, clean air for our communities, food for the hungry, balanced growth. One individual step at a time, but these are my steps and your steps, and our collective steps are powerful.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:” so keep your eye out for that tangible cause that opens your heart, a reality riddled pursuit! Embrace it and let it stir your passion be-cause the answer may simply come in two parts; a tangible pursuit – that opens our heart. Let us build a bridge between them and walk across.

Moments at the Great Salt Lake

During the second half of 2022 I curated an advocacy campaign to better introduce our state legislators to this profoundly beautiful and essential body of water, this Great Salt Lake who’s watershed we have settled into. The campaign prompted an invitation from the Capitol Curator to exhibit my work in the halls of the House of Representatives for the 2023 legislative session. I was honored to have my photographs part of our legislators daily view, and grateful that the exhibit was extended to hang until January 2024.