The Waters We Choose to See: A Meditation on Lake Powell's Future
By Bob Hembree
The Vanishing Horizon (September 8, 2021)
This morning, I stand at the edge of what remains. The red sandstone stretches beneath my feet, revealing itself after decades of submersion—stone that remembers a time before the dam, before the lake, before the name Powell was inscribed upon this landscape. The receding waterline has left a pale band against the canyon walls, a ghostly tidemark measuring absence.
Lake Powell breathes like a living entity—expanding and contracting with the seasons, with the years, with the collective choices of millions living upstream and downstream. Today, its exhalation feels labored, its surface lower than many can remember. Tourists still navigate its narrowing channels, their wakes unfurling like questions against shores that weren't shores a generation ago.
My footprints join others on the newly exposed sandstone, temporary signatures that wind will erase by evening. My shadow falls across the boundary between what was underwater last season and what remains submerged today. I am standing in a place of transition, watching the slow transformation of a landscape that refuses to hold still for the camera, that resists our human need for permanence.
I know this will be my final editorial for the Lake Powell Chronicle. The irony doesn't escape me—that I should be departing as the waters recede, that my tenure as chronicler should end just as the story grows more complex, more urgent. Page has become my home, and though I leave my position, I will remain to witness what unfolds.
The Architecture of Hope
When I first arrived in Page, Navajo Generating Station still operated, its three towering stacks punctuating the horizon like exclamation marks. The coal-fired plant seemed both eternal and endangered—a contradiction that few wanted to examine too closely. Throughout the community, conversations swirled with the comforting syntax of possibility: NGS would find a buyer, would be repurposed, would somehow continue. Hope floated like smoke from those stacks, visible from miles away.
I remember speaking with workers whose families had depended on the station for generations, whose understanding of the future was constructed around its continued operation. Their optimism wasn't naïve—it was necessary, a shelter built against the encroaching reality of an industry in decline. They knew the statistics, the market forces, the environmental concerns. Yet they continued to speak in the language of continuation rather than conclusion.
I wanted to understand what would replace NGS in the community's economic ecosystem. The answer came readily, served with confidence: tourism would expand to fill the void. The lake would draw visitors as it always had; the town would adapt as it always had. This singular solution carried the weight of collective hope, though even then, shadows of doubt were lengthening across the conversation.
Neuroscientist Tali Sharot might recognize in these predictions a textbook case of optimism bias—that curious, persistent tendency of the human brain to anticipate outcomes more favorable than evidence suggests. "We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures," she writes. "We watch our backs, weigh the odds, pack an umbrella. But both neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic."
This isn't delusion but adaptation. Our ancestors survived not by perfect prediction but by persistent action in the face of uncertainty. Those who anticipated positive outcomes were more likely to undertake difficult journeys, to plant seeds despite drought, to imagine possibilities beyond immediate evidence. We carry their optimistic genetics, their neural architecture of hope.
The Memory of Water
Glen Canyon Recreation Area Superintendent William Shott shared with me his experience of optimism's shadow side. He spoke of avalanche rescues from his earlier career, of interviews with survivors who had ignored multiple warnings—notices in newspapers, signs at trailheads, direct cautions from rangers. When asked why they proceeded despite knowing the danger, they offered a response both simple and profound: "We've always come here, and we've never seen an avalanche."
Past experience—absence of catastrophe—trumped present information. The unwitnessed danger remained theoretical, less compelling than the remembered safety of previous visits. Our brains build prediction models based on what we've personally observed, not on what we're told might occur.
I see this same pattern reflected in our relationship with Lake Powell. "The lake's low," visitors observe. "But it's always been low before." The unprecedented nature of the current decline remains, for many, less real than the memory of waters that returned after previous droughts. Each personal timeline becomes the measure against which all change is evaluated.
What happens when the water withdraws beyond the reach of living memory? When the lake contracts beyond patterns established in visitor photographs, in childhood recollections, in the operational history of marinas and tour companies? We find ourselves navigating not just unfamiliar channels but unfamiliar conceptual territory—a future that refuses to conform to the contours of our past experience.
The Fragility of Single Stories (May 2025)
I've watched small towns decline across America—lumber towns, manufacturing towns, mining towns. Their common denominator wasn't poor planning or lack of effort but a dangerous simplicity: economies built around single industries. The vulnerability lies not in the strength of the foundation but in its narrowness.
Tourism appears more resilient than coal, more sustainable than timber harvesting. Yet it carries its own fragility, as Page discovered when Highway 89 collapsed in 2013, temporarily severing the artery that delivered visitors. The COVID-19 pandemic further demonstrated tourism's vulnerability to disruption—not just here but globally, as invisible barriers suddenly materialized between destinations and travelers.
Now climate change accelerates, altering precipitation patterns, amplifying drought cycles, reshaping the very landscape that draws visitors. Scientists have documented these trends for decades, their warnings accumulating like sediment behind a dam. Yet we remain surprisingly selective in our attention, gravitating toward narratives that confirm our preferences rather than challenge our assumptions.
This selectivity isn't unique to Page or to climate discussions. It manifests whenever complex realities threaten cherished simplicities. We prefer single stories—tourism will save us, the lake will return, technology will solve everything—to the messier, more demanding work of developing multiple adaptive strategies.
The Geography of Preparation
I want to see Page prosper. This desire isn't merely sentimental—it's rooted in appreciation for a community that has welcomed me, that has become home. And because I value this place, I hope it takes steps to diversify, to prepare for the uncertainty that characterizes not just Lake Powell's future but the broader environmental and economic landscape.
Optimism serves us best not as expectation but as orientation—not passive anticipation of favorable outcomes but active creation of resilient possibilities. The most useful optimism doesn't ignore warning signs but incorporates them into more sophisticated preparation.
The wisest desert dwellers have always maintained awareness of where water flows during rare rainfall, which plants indicate underground moisture, how to harvest and conserve what falls. They survive not by denying aridity but by developing intimate knowledge of its patterns. Perhaps economic resilience requires similar awareness—recognition of bottlenecks and vulnerabilities, development of diverse strategies, cultivation of multiple possibilities.
The Chronicle, like many small-town newspapers, has faced difficult decisions to survive. Douglass Long, once editor, is no longer with the publication—another casualty, I suspect, of the economic pressures forcing papers to cut costs, trim staff, and consolidate roles. This pattern repeats across America's media landscape, reflecting the larger struggle of community journalism to sustain itself in changing times. Yet the larger continuity—the community's ongoing conversation with itself about its future—requires more than any single editor, regardless of their capabilities. It requires collective willingness to look beyond comfortable narratives, to entertain possibilities that challenge established patterns, and to support the institutions that facilitate this crucial dialogue.
About 1,700 weekly newspapers have closed since Facebook launched in 2004, their absence creating information deserts as surely as climate change creates physical ones. Without reliable reporting on local governance, corporate activities, and community challenges, citizens lose crucial navigation tools for civic participation. Taxes rise, voter participation declines, and accountability erodes when no one shows up at the school board meeting, the planning board meeting, the county commissioner meeting.
The Horizon of Possibility
Tonight I will watch the sunset from Grandview Overlook, observing as light retreats across the water's diminished surface. Tomorrow I will wake to continue living in this landscape of continual revelation and concealment. The lake will persist in its complex conversation with drought and demand, with policy and precipitation. The town will continue navigating between optimism and preparation, between the comfort of familiar patterns and the challenge of emerging realities.
What I couldn't have known when writing this farewell editorial in September 2021 was that eighteen months later—on March 15, 2023, to be precise—I would return to these pages as a freelance writer. Perhaps this, too, reflects the optimism bias that shapes human decisions—the belief that we can step away and then return, that conclusions are rarely as final as they first appear. The Chronicle welcomed me back, and I found myself once again chronicling the changing relationship between community and landscape, between memory and emerging reality.
Some might see irony in this return—the retired writer unable to stay retired. I see instead the gravitational pull of unfinished conversation, the desire to witness and record a community in transition. The lake had continued its retreat during my absence; the town had continued its adaptation. I returned with fresh eyes, with questions shaped by distance, with renewed appreciation for the resilience of both place and people.
I have always seen my job as that of public servant, giving voice to people and highlighting events and issues that affect the community. This service continues beyond formal role, beyond printed word, beyond temporary departures. It lives in conversations at grocery stores, in questions raised at town meetings, in the collective attention we bring to shared challenges.
Maya Angelou's wisdom echoes across the canyon: "Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between." This isn't pessimism disguised as pragmatism. It's recognition that hope and preparation strengthen rather than contradict each other—that the most meaningful optimism isn't blind faith in favorable outcomes but commitment to creating possibility within whatever circumstances emerge.
The water continues its slow withdrawal, revealing formations long submerged. Some see only loss in this unveiling. Others discover beauty in the reemergence of sandstone shapes, in the gradual restoration of canyon contours obliterated by the reservoir's creation. Perhaps there is wisdom in holding both perspectives simultaneously—mourning what recedes while appreciating what returns, preparing for unwelcome changes while remaining open to unexpected opportunities.
This landscape teaches patience, perspective, and the provisional nature of human certainty. The lake expands and contracts within the vastness of canyon time. Our predictions, our hopes, our fears all take their places within this larger rhythm—significant to us, temporary in the canyon's longer reckoning. We plan, we adapt, we continue. The water teaches us its lessons, if we're willing to learn.