by Emily Thompson, Volunteer Director
On an unseasonably warm day in February, I found myself standing at the site of the proposed Escalade Development on Navajo land, looking down at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers. It was the first day of our annual Volunteer Program retreat, when our team escapes the day-to-day office life and gets out onto the plateau for a few days of preparation for the upcoming field season. We were fortunate to spend the first day at the Confluence Overlook with a handful of passionate people—two Save the Confluence family members, a few filmmakers and photographers, and several Grand Canyon Trust colleagues—who are all working diligently to prevent a massive tourist development from moving forward at one of the most sacred sites to the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes. People like Renae Yellowhorse and Sarana Riggs of Save the Confluence are some of the most dedicated women you will ever meet—driven not by a paycheck, but by their steadfast belief in that which is sacred, their traditional values, and their refusal to accept money-hungry developers’ schemes and empty promises.
As I stood there, gazing down at the Confluence, listening to Renae and Sarana sharing their stories, and thinking about our upcoming volunteer season, I was reminded that it was a volunteer experience of my own that brought me to this very place nearly 14 years ago.
When I was 22 years old, I left a life of heels, pantyhose and expectations, to follow an unexplainable pull to the Colorado River and the next chapter of my life. Having never seen the Grand Canyon before, I had the opportunity to volunteer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on a two-week research trip on the Little Colorado River monitoring Humpback chub populations. The Humpback chub is a 4 million-year-old endangered fish species that lives in the Grand Canyon.
(Above: Emily Thompson volunteering on a chub trip at the Little Colorado River in 2002)
Before Glen Canyon Dam was built, the chub lived throughout the length of the characteristically muddy, warm Colorado River. But the post-dam cold, clear waters have driven the fish out of the main river corridor into several habitable tributaries, where warmer water temperatures and fewer predatory trout favor their survival. The Little Colorado River is the only known spawning site for chub, and the USFWS makes a few trips a year into the Little Colorado River to sample the river and collect data that helps determine current population statistics. After 14 days living next to the brilliant blue waters of the Little Colorado River, holding a prehistoric-looking, calm Humpback chub in my nervous hands, I knew I had to spend my career working to protect that species and that place.
And there I was, looking down on that spot, 14 years later, getting to do just that.
Fast forward. Standing there, looking down on the place where I spent so much time researching native fish, I realized that I am still a part of that work, just in a different way. I’m now the Director of the Volunteer Program at the Grand Canyon Trust.
Conservation needs science – and I was glad to be a part of that. But now more than ever, it needs people. Each field season, I have the great fortune of taking students, retirees, and people who have never been to the Southwest to landscapes they can’t imagine. People not only visit the plateau – they spend a week working to protect it. Dare I say, it’s an intimate experience. Yep – LOVE. And if you’ve ever spent a windless, cloudless night on the front porch at Kane Ranch, or been lucky enough to share a moment at the confluence in the company of only chub, ravens, or Canyon wrens, you’ll understand the love I speak of.
So on that unseasonably warm February day, looking eastward up the Little Colorado River drainage, I realized I had come full-circle, back to the place where it all began. I was struck by the necessity of volunteers in the world; the gratitude for the 300 special people that will volunteer with the Grand Canyon Trust in the next 8 months; and of the importance of volunteers to conservation on the Colorado Plateau.
In a world where there never seems to be enough hours in the day, and time slips ever faster into the future, why do people volunteer their time? A volunteer experience gives us something we crave as humans – to be part of something beyond ourselves, to give back to a place that has given us inexpressible joy. That volunteer trip all those years ago provided a young, inquisitive me looking for a purpose in life with an opportunity to be a part of something I didn’t even realize I needed. It is my hope that every volunteer—young and old—who goes on a trip with the Trust feels like they are a part of something bigger than themselves—part of a movement of people working to preserve that which is sacred to all of us.
The plateau needs volunteers to keep places like the Little Colorado River Confluence as untouched by man as we can; to ensure the existence of an ancient species of fish; to preserve the cultures and stories that come with these places; and ultimately, to return to a way of living that restores our connection to the earth and to ourselves. I am grateful for every moment I’ve spent here. It is in every breath I breathe, in every dream I dream, in every future I imagine. I can only hope the same happens for every volunteer who finds their way to the Colorado Plateau.
We still have spots open on our 2016 trips! If you’d like to volunteer this field season with the Trust, see our full trip schedule.
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