Local poet and activist sits vigil with the Great Salt Lake

By Peri Kinder | peri.k@thecityjournals.com

Local activist, poet and storyteller Nan Seymour, is bearing witness to the Great Salt Lake. From Jan. 18 through March 4, corresponding with the Utah State Legislative session, Seymour and her writing community held a vigil for the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.

In a small camper on Antelope Island, Seymour and other nature lovers lived by the lake, recording breathtaking sunsets, the heartbreaking loss of more than 400 aquatic diving birds, the majesty of bison roaming the island and the beauty of a lake fighting to survive.

“I’m not a scientist, not an expert, but someone who’s loved birds for a long time,” Seymour said. “I wasn’t aware of the genuine state of peril and now it’s accurate to call this an active collapse of the ecosystem…I was late to pay attention but when it caught my attention, it caught my full attention. The lake is the heart of this bioregion and hemispherically essential.”

This is the second year Seymour has held vigil at the Great Salt Lake. In 2022, she felt it was necessary to be physically present with the lake and respect it as a sentient ancestor, neighbor and even a mother. She said it helps to hold the lake in a relational way, not just thinking of it as a water resource.

Scientists think there still might be time to save the lake and its ecosystem but it will take a concerted effort from legislators, farmers, homeowners and stakeholders to ensure the lake’s survival.

At 4,189 feet, the Great Salt Lake is at its lowest point in recorded history. Lawmakers had the opportunity to adopt a resolution, setting a goal of raising the lake to 4,198 feet, but it seems the resolution will fail.

“We have to change our ways and it’s not comfortable,” Seymour said. “We will have to think in ways we haven’t thought before and take levels of responsibility we haven’t been willing to take. We have to live within our means with water. Just like if someone you love is dying, you move in a different way.”

The Great Salt Lake is a migratory stop for 10 million birds and is a center of life in the region. As the lake’s level continues to drop, due to drought and human interference like water diversion and outdated water policies, essential aspects of the ecosystem will continue to die off.

Microbialites, essentially living rocks, live in the shallow water of the lake and metabolize life, creating a home for brine flies and brine shrimp that feeds the birds. As microbialites are exposed due to receding water, they die.

Increased salinity in the lake is killing keystone species. Toxic dust in the dried lakebed is dangerous to humans, birds and animals living near the area. Seymour will continue calling attention to the perilous situation and asked that others raise their voices by talking to their representatives, writing op-eds and walking along the lake shore to keep the conversation going.

“Speak up, even when it feels hopeless and helpless,” she said. “It’s always against the odds, always against the powers that be. The people who make it happen are instigators, just ordinary, broken-hearted people who persist. They are outside the realm of power and influence. They are just people with hearts that keep showing up. That’s how change happens.”

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Whilehiking in Escalante National Forest, teenagers Natalie Rowe, Kimberly Watson, Malachi Chaya and their church group discovered a hiker who had been lost in the wilderness for four days.

“I think he just wandered off the trail because the trail wasn't marked,” Natalie said.

The three teenagers are sixth and seventh-graders at Mountain Heights Academy, an online charter school. When they formed a team to enter the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, they decided their project would address outdoor recreation safety because of their experience.

The Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest challenges students to use science, technology, engineering and math to solve a problem in their community.

Through research, the students discovered that Search and Rescue teams have seen a dramatic increase in requests for help in outdoor recreation areas. Just last year, there were 1,043 search and rescue incidents within Utah’s five national parks.

“There has been a huge increase in hikers since the pandemic, people wanting to go outside, and so there's a lot more people out hiking that aren’t very experienced,” Kimberly said.

For their project, the teens are developing transmitting and receiving devices with long range wave capabilities that could be used for communication along hiking trails without reliable cell service.

“We could make stations every mile along the way, so if you need help, you can press the button,” Natalie said.

Mountain Heights Academy teachers encourage students to compete in contests because they provide authentic, immersive and engaging learning experiences inspired by students’ interests. The school has developed a culture of participation in contests. All three team members have older siblings who’ve participated in the contest previously. Natalie’s older sister Mariella is a mentor for the team this year.

“The school is a network of ideas,” science teacher Lora Gibbons said. “It's something we try to build on each year. So an idea may start to surface and it may start to be developed by students in the next year or two—that's the beauty of having that kind of flow each year. That's really what gives our program that depth to explore ideas that maybe we would never come up with if it was just a couple of them.”

MHA teams have been selected as top 300 Samsung finalists for several years. This year, seven Utah schools made the top 300 and received a $2,500 prize package. Jordan District’s Jordan Academy for Technology team was also one of the finalists.

The JATC team’s contest project is a similar idea to MHA’s team. Their transmitting device will automate school attendance and track students’ location in case of an emergency. The