Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams, and Finding Hope Amidst Change

I began my journey on the twelve-mile auto tour route at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, steering wheel in one hand, binoculars in the other. It was a birding expedition I had taken often, but never with the slight breeze of late September.

I had no knowledge of the birds I would soon encounter; the prospect made me press the gas with gentle excitement. Each venture to the refuge is different. If there is anything that is consistent in Utah, it is change. The birds that migrate through this refuge—nestled at the northeast tip of the Great Salt Lake and spanning nearly 80,000 acres—come and go as swiftly as this West desert’s seasons and weather.

Hardstem bulrush patterned a maze through shallow water filled with marbled godwits, American Avocets, and long-necked stilts dipping their heads beneath the steel-blue surface. This wetland plant, a sparkling emerald-green just weeks before, had now welcomed the dark tones of fall, just as the mountain slopes above it had. Soon the shorebirds would leave for South America, and thirty-thousand tundra swans would arrive from Alaska.

A Great Blue Heron crossed my path––the royal bird I can always count on seeing, the one who has given me hope during the coldest winters and driest of summers. I exited my green Subaru and heard her great honk and the flap of her wings. Though this is a common sight, I always stop to observe such details. As Rachel Carson writes,

“What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

The first time I visited the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was January 2023. I arrived before dawn, just after a record snowfall, to count birds. Ten minutes into the expedition, I was stunned by the life I saw in the dead of winter. I felt as though I were on a magical birding journey in Antarctica, surrounded by thousands of swans, Buffleheads, Mallards, and Common Goldeneyes playing in the water. Bald eagles and harriers perched on dead trees.

The quiet beauty of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge took me by surprise. I would never look at the Great Salt Lake and its wetlands in the same way again. I had spent my childhood dreaming about the coasts and their wildlife, but here, the birds showed me something equally beautiful and important.

I was delighted to learn Rachel Carson, famous for her writings on the East Coast, visited the Bear River refuge in 1947 and published a government pamphlet on its unique features and birds in the USFWS Conservation in Action series. In the pamphlet, which she co-wrote with Vanez T. Willson, she marvels at the refuge’s vast number of waterfowl and its importance as a key stopover for migrating birds in the Pacific and Central flyways.

“Here, especially during the fall migration,” she writes, “it is literally possible to see a million ducks in one day. Here many species considered rare elsewhere may be seen by anyone who will drive their car slowly around the miles of gravel road that crown the retaining dikes of the marshes. Here are birds that, in their north and south flights, have touched almost all parts of the western half of the continent. The site of this great spectacle is a key spot in the conservation of North American birds.”

In recent years, however, changes at Great Salt Lake have brought unprecedented extremes, forcing many of the lake’s migratory birds to seek new places to stop. The lake—once part of the vast ancient Lake Bonneville, which reached 5,090 feet above sea level at its peak—had shrunk to a fraction of its former size. In late 2022, Great Salt Lake reached its all-time historic low of 4,188.5 feet, leaving many locals in fear of a complete desiccation in the near future. Shorelines had receded so far that it was sometimes impossible to see the water from the lake’s briny beaches, let alone the hundreds of shorebirds that once peppered its shores.

During the drought, Utahns mourned the lake they feared they would soon lose, and advocacy groups emerged in response to its decline. The lake, once called “stinky” by many in the area, had captured everyone’s attention.

Yet, consistent with Utah’s nature, the following winter broke the intense cycle of drought the state had endured since 2020 with record snowfall after snowfall, replenishing the lake. Still, it is projected it will continue to recede over time due to climate warming, and 2022’s low will not remain the record.

As a child in Utah, I heard little about the environmental challenges facing my home state—that the snow always deemed the “Greatest on Earth” for skiing could disappear in my lifetime. The focus of national environmental conversations seemed to be on the oceans and forests of the East. Learning about the threatened fate of this beloved gem of my state—and of North America—reminded me of what Rachel Carson stood for: The importance of every organism and ecosystem, big or small, popular or ignored. Rachel Carson was ahead of her time when she wrote, “The importance of Bear River Refuge is far more than local.”

The loss of the Great Salt Lake, and the small losses that have already been felt in recent years, are a national tragedy. The unique environment created by this oasis in the desert has not only provided a home for millions of America’s birds, it has shaped the work of some of the country’s most influential environmental writers.

In Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, author, activist, and educator Terry Tempest Williams details the lake’s record-high water levels in 1986, which caused displacement and damage—similar to the extremes caused by drought.

She intertwines these environmental changes with her own personal challenges, exploring the deep connection between her family’s battle with cancer and the shifting landscape of the lake. I’ve also found comfort and solace in the lake’s rise and fall and trusting fowl; its brine shrimp I float with and its quiet battle against forces beyond its control.

Williams reflects on hope throughout her memoir, and how it persists even when shrouded by a drifting fog. I also hold on to hope despite the lake’s grim reality. Just as snow follows drought, life returns in unexpected ways, and sometimes it is drought that leads to the appreciation for what we take for granted.

Williams’ list of “accidental” birds spotted at the lake in her memoir is proof of this: birds rarely seen in the West, such as the American flamingo and Roseate spoonbill, have been spotted along the Great Salt Lake’s shores. Other accidental birds include bar tailed godwits, wandering tattlers, and red-necked grebes. In Refuge, Williams quotes Emily Dickinson: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.”

“How can hope be denied when there’s always a possibility of an American flamingo or roseate spoonbill floating down from the sky like pink rose petals?” Williams writes. “How can we rely solely on the statistics and percentages that would shackle our lives when red-necked grebes, bar-tailed godwits, and wandering tattlers come into our country?”

As long as there are birds at Great Salt Lake, I will have hope.

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RCC National Environment Leadership Presidential Fellow – Clarissa Casper – Utah State University

Clarissa Casper is studying English Creative Writing as a master’s student at Utah State University. She was born and raised between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake in Northern Utah. While living there, she grew to love the stories nature told by observing the flowers, mountain goats, and waterfalls decorating the green slopes near her home. Clarissa has loved birds all her life and enjoys writing about ecosystems through their lens.