Beginning
You may know Glen Canyon by the dam of the same name; the dam that created the reservoir Lake Powell in 1963. Since then, Glen Canyon has lay beneath hundreds of feet of water, as have its hundreds of side canyons, 3,000 Indigenous cultural sites, and the habitat of 79 plant species, 189 bird species, and 34 mammal species. Glen Canyon has been called "the place no one knew" and labelled a site of irreversible loss and degradation.
Yet embedded in Glen Canyon's sandstone walls and muddy shorelines remains a vibrant archive of stories. Some of these stories are very old, some are only beginning, and others are resurfacing, sometimes in surprising, dangerous, and delightful new forms.
Fossilized tracks, ephemeral footprints, and microbial burrows trace the rhythms and pulses of the canyon's biotic life. Wind-cut furrows and river-carved chasms recount ancient interplays between water, wind, and land. Petroglyph tapestries and mining scars catalog diverse and sometimes conflictory relationships between humans and the natural world. Together, these sedimented records reveal how Glen Canyon's various agents interact with the landscape, and with each other, often across seemingly disjointed times and spaces. And these markings are reminders that Glen Canyon has been deeply known by all kinds of living and nonliving things.
Sedimentation is a collection of these stories, excavated from Glen Canyon's earthly archives.
Written and Created by Hannah Green and Devin Becker
you are silt
you may be embedded in the strata
you may be deep underground
or clinging to the outer dermis of a canyon wall
you arrived 220 million years ago, borne by a river that no longer exists. you came from lakes, streams, and briny wetlands. you blew here on the wind, hard to say from where. you are fossil dust
or, 190 million years ago, you flew in on wind gusts which plucked you from quartz and iron dunes. you arranged yourselves horizontally along wind lines, and when enough of you had piled up, you tumbled down yourself in avalanches, cutting vertical creases down your stacks
you were brought by an inland sea that flooded this side of the continent 90 millions ago. much of you are made from flecks of sharks, fish, turtles, and dinosaurs
perhaps you arrived recently, from somewhere else, delivered by bird wing, on shoe, from mountain side or through fish gut
you might stay here for another day, century, millennia, or billion years
or the river might cut you from your bed and carry you away
the water takes you fast or slow all the way to the ocean
perhaps you wash up on a beach
there is so much of you you tune the water’s temperature
algae blossoms in your nooks
endemic fish proliferate
you hold magnesium, potassium, and calcium
plants take root in your fertile shores
when enough of you gathers you alter the river’s course
some of you stream over an abandoned uranium mine
you are radioactive
humans gather you in handfuls to make art and homes
much of you heaps up behind concrete dams
not so much of you flows to the sea now
there is not so much room left for the water anymore
still, maybe you are embedded in the rock strata maybe you are deep underground or clinging to the outer dermis of a canyon wall or maybe you arrived recently, from somewhere else, delivered by bird wing, on shoe, from mountain or through fish gut you might stay here for another day, century, millennia, or billion years or the river might cut you from your bed and carry you away