Resilience
Talking to willows as an antidote to despair.
When life starts to feel overwhelming, I seek out the willows. “Salix exigua” or Coyote willow, and “Baccharis salicifolia” or Seepwillow, in particular, with lithe green branches and leaves that caress my skin as I move through them along the river’s edge. The willows, and other plants in canyon country’s riparian gardens, thrive in this mercurial space. Flash floods scour silt from tributaries. High winds carry seeds upriver and into side canyons, where they germinate and grow in newly exposed soil. These plants evolved to persist through natural desert disturbances like flash flooding, dramatic sedimentation, and erosion.
And this is precisely why these native riverside plants are returning and thriving in Glen Canyon, where water levels have steadily declined for two decades. Places that were once underwater, now abound in cottonwoods, willows, rushes, reeds, baccharis, and wildflowers. The bursts of green against the orange canyon walls are themselves a true symbol of resilience. These desert plants are not merely surviving in difficult conditions, this is how they flourish.
In May 2022, while on assignment for bioGraphic, I joined a scientific team in Glen Canyon to survey re-emerging plant life as reservoir levels dropped to record lows. Many of the locations I had previously been to, but without the eye of an ecologist by my side. Learning the names of the plants felt like getting introduced to my desert neighbors, whom I walk past daily. However, understanding their adaptations to the desert opened my eyes to a greater story of optimism and possibility that nature can tell us if we listen.
One scene continues to stand out and remind me of this:
Indeed, as we walk further away from the reservoir, willows, sedges, and rushes increase. We stop to drink water beneath the shade of a large cottonwood that has matured as the reservoir receded, its heart-shaped leaves rattling in the wind. Bursts of pale evening primrose (Oenothera pallida) and scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregate) flowers punctuate the spring-fed stream. Coles-Ritchie smiles. “This is a really healthy native community. It gives me hope.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of fluffy white cottonwood seeds that he gathered a few minutes earlier. While the wind helps disperse the seeds naturally, he spreads them along the banks where the stabilizing plants will help them root. “Grow strong future cottonwood trees!”
I am not trying to water down the seriousness of this moment in time where we are facing the realities of climate change, genocide, political uncertainty, economic disparity, and societal injustice.
Nor am I suggesting that talking to flowers will make it better. What I am saying, is that these desert plants remind me to hang on and push me to grow. To proceed and take the steps ahead in this lifetime, antidotes to despair will be necessary to maintain our strength to support one another. To maintain hope and momentum. They always are.
You can read the full story, “Songs of the Dammed,” here.
Lake Powell’s water level is currently at an elevation of 3,586 feet, up from approximately 3,524 feet when this story was written. While some plant growth is now underwater again, far more remains exposed as it has since 2001. And long-term projections for the Colorado River system indicate a 31% decline by 2050 is possible due to a warming and aridifying climate. The paradox of the riparian return to Glen Canyon is its timing with conditions that are begging humans to adapt. Perhaps the greatest lesson in the willows, is not to stubbornly dig in our roots, but to releasse ourselves into change.
To support ongoing scientific studies in Glen Canyon please check out the good folks at Glen Canyon Institute.
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