The Long Look Ahead

by Pamela Hyde, Executive Director

From Hidden Passage, the Journal of Glen Canyon Institute
Volume V

On a late april morning in 1993 I sat on a beach in the heart of the Grand Canyon and watched early morning light pull the warm colors of the canyon walls into view. I had camped on a small beach separated by a small outcropping of rock from the rest of the group’s camp, and awoke at first light to watch the bats nip their last insects from the night sky before retreating to their day roosts.

President Clinton accepts a
Restore Glen Canyon bumper sticker
from Treasurer Jeri Ledbetter

The gurgling of the river flowing endlessly by was the morning’s only sound. As I watched the canyon colors brighten with the new morning, I heard from across the river the clear, cascading trill of a canyon wren pierce the morning air. At that moment I knew that I belonged to the river and her canyons forever.

That beach would have been underwater if the Sierra Club, led by David Brower, had not stopped a pair of dams in the Grand Canyon twenty-five years earlier. David Brower took the long look ahead.

I soon discovered that I was thirty years too late to save Glen Canyon from a similar fate. In order to fulfill my bond to the river and her canyons, then, I would have to refuse to accept the status quo. I, too, would need to take the long look ahead.

Fast-forward nearly seven years. On January 11, 2000, President Clinton stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon to announce the creation of three new national monuments and the expansion of a fourth. As I listened to the President, I was struck by the words he used to exhort us to have a vision for the future:

"President [Theodore] Roosevelt challenged us…to see beyond today or next month or next year. He said, the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight; it should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead.

"We have a heavier responsibility even than our forebears did a century ago to take that long look ahead—to ask ourselves what the next century holds, what are the big challenges, what are the big opportunities, to dream of the future we want for our children, and then to move aggressively to build that future."

The message was clear. Be visionary. Be bold. Be the one that is not afraid to correct mistakes of the past. Be willing to commit your talents to building a better future.

I have a further message to add, another exhortation. It’s your world. It’s your Colorado River. You hold its future in your hands. Break free of the fetters of the status quo and take the long look ahead.

My bond with the river and her canyons has committed me to make a difference for the future of the Colorado River. Some day soon I will watch the bats and listen to the canyon wrens as the morning light illuminates the sandstone walls of Glen Canyon. I hope you will join me.