Anatomy of a Composition - Western Landscapes

The western landscape was formed over the course of millions of years, with buttes, basins, cataracts and canyons that bare the scars of untold and multiple natural forces. It is both a raw and majestic landscape, with tower peaks of 14,000 feet, ringed with Conifer and Deciduous forests and blanketed with meadows of grasses and the most vibrant wildflower displays; as well as these lands, the buttes and mesa and barren canyon lands parched by an unrelenting orographic effect while simultaneously be fed by massive rivers playing their own role in the hydrologic cycle.

Yet this same landscape has been altered radically by the few hundred years of Western ideals that have occupied it. Ideas of settlement and navigation, of taming and harassing have brought more people to the West and for some the cornucopia of wealth inherent to these ideas. But to the landscape itself along with the native plant and animal species dependent on it, a new, unrecognizable place with diminishing returns.

The Green River, flowing from its sources in the Wind River of Wyoming cuts through a tiny corner of Colorado. The Browns Valley and Gates of Lodore present just two feature for the river to flow through with one, Browns Valley, being completely altered and the other, the Gates of Lodore, seemingly untouched, because of the human geography just upstream. In an attempt to tame the river, the Dutch John Dam was built to harness the river’s power and control floods, but the downstream effect has choked off the estuary system in Browns Valley, the site of a thriving migration flyover for hundreds of thousands of birds every year. While the Gates of Lodore seem less effected, the lack of a spring flood means more beach erosion and depleted fish habitat.

Both Powell and Stegnar said “no” to this type of development, and the thousands of Monkey Wrenchers’ following Abbey’s advise will still implore that we have taken the wrong fork. Maybe “resettlement” of the West is the only way to save it, especially in the face of so many signs of obvious change.