Confessions of an Eco-Warrior by dave foreman

Author:dave foreman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-15T16:00:00+00:00

Massive, powerful, like some creation of Darth Vader, Glen Canyon Dam squats in the canyon of the Colorado River on the Arizona-Utah border and backs the cold, dead waters of “Lake” Powell some 180 miles upstream, drowning the most awesome and magical canyon on Earth. More than any other single entity, Glen Canyon Dam is the symbol of the destruction of wilderness, of the technological ravishment of the West. The finest fantasy of eco-warriors in the West is the destruction of the dam and the liberation of the Colorado. So it was only proper that on March 21, 1981—at the spring equinox, the traditional time of rebirth—Earth First! held its first national gathering at Glen Canyon Dam.

On that morning, seventy-five members of Earth First! lined the walkway of the Colorado River Bridge, seven hundred feet above the once-free river, and watched five compatriots busy at work with an awkward black bundle on the massive dam just upstream. Those on the bridge carried placards reading “Damn Watt, Not Rivers,” “Free the Colorado,” and “Let it Flow.” The five of us on the dam attached ropes to a grille, shouted out “Earth First!” and let three hundred feet of black plastic unfurl down the side of the dam, creating the impression of a growing crack. Those on the bridge returned the cheer.

Then Edward Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, told the protestors of the “green and living wilderness” that was Glen Canyon only nineteen years ago:

And they took it away from us. The politicians of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, in cahoots with the land developers, city developers, industrial developers of the Southwest, stole this treasure from us in order to pursue and promote their crackpot ideology of growth, profit, and power—growth for the sake of power, power for the sake of growth.

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