VISION OF A RIVER REBORN

– excerpt by Pamela Hyde, Executive Director

On a bluff above the Kennebec River in the city of Augusta, Maine, I stood amid a crowd of two hundred people and watched water rush through the new breach in the Edwards Dam. For the first few minutes the water was a silty brown, like a desert river in flood. The normally clear water of the Kennebec was eating away at a dirt cofferdam that had shut off the water from the breach in the dam created during the previous weeks.

Now that Interior Secretary Babbitt and the parade of VIPs were on hand to create a show for the media and the rest of us, a backhoe began the process of removing the cofferdam, and the river did the rest as it rushed through the opening in the dam.

Hope, joy, satisfaction, gratitude, and a host of other emotions swirled within me as we watched the muddy water surge through the hole in the dam. But I guess what I felt most strongly was a sense of pride for the river. It was almost as if I merged with the river and felt its strength and pride as for the first time in 162 years it flowed unimpeded down toward the ocean.

I can only imagine the sense of pride I will feel for the Colorado River when it once again flows freely past Glen Canyon Dam.

For more of Pamela Hyde’s reflections regarding her experience at Edwards Dam look for the opening article of "Hidden Passage" (Glen Canyon Institute’s journal/newsletter) in the Fall edition.