People of the Blue-Green Waters

The Overlooked Side of Havasupai

Story and Photos by Sera Lindsey // @portablesera 

“Havasupai” or “Havasu Baaja” translates into English as “people of the blue-green waters.” The Havasupai tribe have lived within the arms of the Grand Canyon for over 1,000 years. 

If you check the #havasufalls hashtag on social media, you’ll be sure to see plenty of arms-out-in-wonder, yoga poses, selfie sticks, and inspirational quotes. What you likely won’t see much of is the Supai Village reservation. Those who live there have been historically subjugated by broken treaties, cultural exploitation, and governmental abuse. Though they live within one of the most stunning geographical locations I’ve ever beheld, they exist in extreme poverty. The town has a small school and church, both crudely spray painted over by locals with words of spite and anger. Hungry and overworked horses chew on trees. People are deprived of healthy food, with no access to produce so far down in the canyon. What once was the land of the blue-green waters and rich giving earth is now another checked-off item on a bucket list. This place and its people receive so little notice, save for those who wish to showcase waterfalls, and nothing more. 

While there, I saw a young boy gazing out at the land he calls home. He stood less than a mile from a tourist camp. Beer cans, grocery store sandwich wrappers, and empty chip bags were left as tips in this pack-in-pack-out campsite. Bloated squirrels loitered at every turn. I saw garbage blossoming from the top of compost toilets and explosions of litter along the sidelines of the trail. While hiking, I breathed in the trash fumes as they baked in the Arizona sun. So little is asked for, and even less is given. 

There is a great chasm between experience and awareness. The excitement and hunger of showcasing a new adventure dramatically sways our moral compass. Witnessing the lack of learning is disheartening. Travel is planning, and offers a clear opportunity to gain knowledge of a place and its people. The need to protect and preserve is real. 

Swimming in the Havasupai water and seeing several “NO DRONES” and “NO DIVING” signs may seem like guidelines to some. But maintaining these last sparks of sacred land is much cooler than doing a backflip into it. These aren’t just requests to fulfill, but acts of respect to uphold. 

My thoughts are with those who suffer the greed of the world, so many of them living as stewards of a complex beauty that they hardly have space to experience themselves. I hope we may all recognize the need to act with reverence and awareness—even when it costs us a few double taps. 

Learn more about these indigenous people // theofficialhavasupaitribe.com

Bite by Bite

Defeating Doubt on Two Wheels

Story and photos by Cierra Xavier // @c_xavier

“How do you eat an elephant?” Without having much time to reply to my boyfriend Dylan’s question, he quickly responded with, “Bite by bite.” I remember stubbornly feeling frustrated because I knew he was right. Most obstacles can be overcome if you work little by little, and I needed to adopt this mentality in order to prepare for the big bike journey ahead.

After a few New Year’s Eve drinks in Big Sur last year, Dylan, our friend Alex, and I agreed to do a bike tour down the coast of California. Unlike most drunken promises, this one held true. We were all in. From that moment on, I was filled with excitement—but also terrified—and I couldn’t help but fall into the quicksand of my anxious mind. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I can’t ride the entire way? But what if…?” Inevitably, the thought of never trying outweighed all the what-ifs—and how could I face the what-ifs without even attempting? 

The Pacific coast of California is an extremely popular route for cyclists; our tour would take us roughly 520 miles from San Francisco to Long Beach. This was my first long distance bike tour and one that’s been on my bucket list for over six years. By late May, I was running on little training or preparation when I met Dylan, Alex, and Daniel (our friend from New York who flew in to ride with us) on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge and began the journey that we’d committed to five months earlier. My hands were shaking, but I quickly realized that my fear and anticipated failure quickly subsided once we began to log some serious miles. Riding long distance is similar to any other bike ride; you just never turn around. 

Early on in the trip, we got word from a friend who’d ridden the coast a week prior and had walked his bike (illegally) across the Big Sur closure. Until then, we weren’t really sure how we’d get past the Mud Creek slide—a closure just south of Gorda where 75 acres of land fell off the rugged coastline, completely decimating Highway 1. We weighed our options: face an extensive detour that would take us inland and included a grueling climb up Nacimiento-Fergusson, or pay for an overpriced shuttle that would drive us all the way around the detour. The decision was made in seconds—we’d attempt to cross the slide. 

The only catch to crossing the slide was that we’d have to wait until construction was over and workers were gone for the day. It was 12:45 on day five of the tour when we arrived in Gorda, and we’d already ridden over 200 miles south from the Golden Gate Bridge, making it through the majority of Big Sur’s magical coastline. Feeling impatient, we tried our hand at bribery. Dylan approached a construction worker sitting in a small white car, offering him $60 to let us pass. A shake of his head said it all. Crap. We had another four hours to kill before the work construction crew went home for the day.

At about 5:30, the four of us hiked out from the shelter of the cypress trees we found on the bluff and rode back into Gorda. The little white car that the construction guard sat in was gone. Here was our chance! We snuck around the gate and rode swiftly past the road closure signs. My heart knocked wildly in my chest as we rode the two miles between where the highway was closed, and where the slide actually started. The devastation was massive: 100 yards of rocks and rubble covered the highway, and you could clearly see the vast portion of the hillside that had fallen into the water below—creating a new surf break for the locals. This was unreal! We unloaded our bags, threw our empty bikes over our shoulders, and began to walk our bikes and gear across the rock-covered highway. 

We passed the closed gate on the south side of the road closure just as the sun started to set over the ocean, beginning the steady ascent up to Ragged Point. There wasn’t another car, bicycle, building, or person in sight for miles. This must have been what PCH was like in the ‘30s! Just us, cruising, laughing, and high-fiving across California’s highway that’s normally crowded with selfie-taking-tourists. It was just getting dark by the time we hit Ragged Point. Fueled with excitement, we continued to pedal for miles into the night guided by an empty moonlit highway.

My tires hummed along a vacant California highway under a luminous Flower Moon. It was such a simple moment, but I felt completely empowered. We had made it past the most challenging part of the ride, and all the fear and what-ifs were gone. Thousands of cyclists complete this same bike tour every year, yet I knew my experience was unique. You’ll never know “what if” unless you try. Proving to myself that I can overcome any great challenge, this adventure is one that I will remember for a lifetime. 

Human Thought is a Geological Force

Seeking Water in the Colorado River Basin

Story by Joal Stein // @Joal______

Photos by Sarah Lewis // @sarleww

LAKE POWELL

I turn to my traveling companions, Sara and Sarah, and mouth, “Wow.” We have just driven over the Glen Canyon Dam and are crossing from Page, Arizona into Utah towards Lone Rock Campground. The line of RVs and campers lined at the shore resembles a combination of the movie Twister and Burning Man: storm-chasers and extreme campers as gray clouds roil overhead and dust pelts our faces. There’s no way we’ll make it through the night in our tents.

The next day we rent a pontoon boat to explore the bays and canyons in this sprawling reservoir. As the employee gives us the mandatory instructions on how to operate the boat, I am barely paying attention because I’m trying to imagine a once barren brown-and-red desert landscape—a time before the construction of the dam in 1963 backed up the Colorado River and flooded this region. Gliding into the bay and along the wind-swept canyon walls, my eyes catch the transmission lines studded along the ridges, evidence that this is not just a recreational area for the adventure-minded, but a site of power generation. Another link along the Colorado River Basin that powers much of the Southwestern United States in a long chain of infrastructure. 

When they dammed and flooded this area 55 years ago after a long-fought environmental battle, they did so with the expectation that the Colorado River would flow as it does, with the same capacity, for as long as they needed it. Climate change alters this story. Staring at the gradient of hues and chalk-rings roped around the canyons, it’s apparent that the water level is dropping further and further down. Lake Powell is drying up as the summers get hotter and dryer.

As those expectations of control and predictability over nature are undermined and the water subsides, revealed are the fossils, spear tips, and rocks of past ages and societies. There is a whole world that lives underwater in the riverbeds and imprinted on ancient rocks. What cultures live submerged in this canyon? What are the past truths and histories that those engineers and politicians—this society—chose to drown? 

A sense of future grief settles into me. Climate change is not simply the warming of a planet but also the disruption of systems: of droughts, wildfires, flooding, heat, cold, and a planet being pushed to the extremes because a society pushed to engineer and strangle it. It’s a grim truth that is becoming harder and harder to drown. 

The dam was just one engineering project of thousands that were built with the purpose of taming the Colorado River to provide power and water for the bulging communities of the Southwest. All rivers—in their natural state—meander, flow, and change course over geologic time, an alluvial fan that spreads nutrients and carves canyons before depositing into oceans and gulfs. Here, a large watershed has been transformed into an engineered system designed to suit the needs of human settlements.

The boat turns a corner into a sublime sandbar beach with slot canyons and large boulders spilling down them. It’s a humbling sight that is both extraterrestrial and familiar. We park the boat on the sand, rambling sun (and wine) drunk somewhere in between the sky and the sand. I once looked up in awe at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, those famous frescos designed to elicit reverence. Surely national parks and public lands must be the cathedrals of the American West, serving a similar function. 

The land is almost speaking to me: I am asking you to slow down. I need you to slow down. 

In this grand chamber of lengthening shadows

hides a mythic grace, emblazoned

blue hues streaking down the

slot canyons running

into their reflections. 

ZION

The naming of a place reveals something about the people that look upon it. Zion reveals itself slowly as you go deeper into the valley, following the course of gravity into a land of textured rock and lush greenery. 

I ask the shop steward at the entrance of the park if Mormons named it Zion.

“No,” she replies, “It was Taft, or maybe Wilson. One of those presidents. Renamed to appeal to white Mormons and attract more tourists.”

“Ah.”

This is an ancient place like many other confluences and tributaries—an oasis in an otherwise harsh environment where a certain kind of life emerges. This particular place has had multiple names, similar to how people in many cultures are bestowed new names at different milestones throughout their lives. It was once Mukuntuweap and now it is Zion. It challenges the sense of a fixed identity, a fixed person, or a fixed place. It is changing and so will I.

I play the childhood game of trying to hold my breath as we pass through the Zion-Mount Carmel tunnel, quickly giving up since it stretches for 1.1 miles, with periodic cuts into its rock walls giving you a shuttering glimpse of the arches, sunlight, and switchbacks of the Pine Creek Valley. I am now pacing my breath to match the rhythm of these frames, trying to navigate an inner landscape of thought and memory. 

If I were a dishonest writer I would tell you that this is the beginning of my journey towards self-discovery through travel. I am not a dishonest writer so to tell you this would be bullshit. At this moment, driving through Zion, I am mostly annoyed with the traffic and desperately looking for water.

Hiking towards Lower Pine Creek Falls, I’m reminded of Edward Abbey’s caustic quote, “You can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus.” But it is unbearably hot, and it’s a relief when we reach our intended destination.

Wind and water are a potter’s thumb

guiding earth as it spins

and memories are like a river

coursing themselves a path

into deeper canyons

recesses of sediment

and sentiments

the unfolding of life sanding down,

washing away,

slipping under,

reaching out and

growing crooked towards the sun.

Mountains frosted by watercolor clouds, 

sticky and rich,

illuminated by a palette of a

solicitous gradient sunset

and somewhere is an old woman

picking up the beads strung along

the oceans of

our most inner selves

As the dawn awakes and once again

the world is devoured

Grand Staircase-Escalante // Upper Calf Creek Falls

There’s a weird tension between conservation and environmentalism; that tension lives in the difference of seeing nature as an object to be protected versus something we are connected to. This is foremost on my mind as we traverse the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the large swath of protected land, along with Bear’s Ears, that Donald Trump and the Department of the Interior has reduced and opened up to mining and drilling.

We are scaling down bare rock cliffs somewhere off of Cottonwood Canyon Road, trying to find the Upper Calf Creek Falls. There is limited shade and no obvious path that leads to the water.

We are not in the right place, carefully scaling down steep, slick rock with a sweeping vista of the surrounding plateaus. We can see a well-defined trail, except it’s a mile away across the river and on the other side of a crevice at least 60 feet deep. 

We’re running out of daylight and there’s no chance we’ll reach our intended destination, but I’m reminded of what I heard in my mind in Lake Powell, to slow down and bear witness to a place under threat. There is a tragic quality to the fact that a set of nativist ideologies around what it means to be “American” will likely reshape this place beyond recognition from its current state.

On our slow ascent back up to the road, the arresting realization I encounter is my inability to speak the language of the landscape, to understand the many histories it presents to us: of environmental destruction, colonial violence, imagined futures, and struggles over who gets to define a place. The story of any landscape can be told from many perspectives, a composite of fragmented myths, hearsay, maps, official archives, and local gossip. The substance of a land is both matter and myth; the dirt and rocks mixed up with the meanings we ascribe to it.

How we relate to the land is an embodiment of how we relate to one another. How we treat the land reveals how we treat one another. Is knowing this enough to change these conditions?

I’m finding myself

increasingly mesmerized by

the improbability of light, its irreducibility,

and the quiet persistence of

human kindness

people all over

in their little pockets

rearranging color and matter and stuff,

just to make every day

a bit more tolerable

a fractured glimpse into

the sum of relations,

scales of sound and light

ascending

towards an immensity

Deep in these skies, is

the brightening light of crisis

The contours of our lives

most fully revealed 

when we see what shadows

are cast onto them

Where the Land Flows into Water

The Colorado River Basin, the large watershed we are in, covers seven states: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California. The river is the primary source of water for 40 million people, with the states allocating water amongst them according to an agreement set out in 1922 through the Colorado River Compact. Each state needs to ensure that they have enough water for their farms and growing communities, to leave enough for the states that the river flows to after them, and collectively they make sure that Lake Powell is filled enough to power the turbines. All of these infrastructural and political choices have left an indelible mark on the landscape; human thought is, in many ways, itself a geological force.  

Wai Wai // The Value of Hawaiian Water

The Hawaiian word for water is Wai. It holds such value that the word for value, worth, or importance is Wai Wai. Water twice.

The native people of Hawai’i have a deep connection with water. Not only because they are located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but because the connection between the life cycle and the water cycle is more fragile on an island. The development of sustainable resource management through native intelligence is why Hawaiian culture has flourished.

A lot has changed in Hawai’i since outsiders came and impacted their way of life. The culture has been oppressed, the people have been brainwashed, the land has been abused, and the water has become polluted. This problem isn’t unique to Hawai’i. We all live with our own versions of this sad development in our different parts of the world. However, Hawaiian culture might hold a long overdue solution to the pollution problem: the Ahupua’a system.

The Ahupua’a system could be explained in a simple bumper sticker: We all live downstream. Yet this system holds people personally responsible for their part of the watershed they’re connected to. It’s about natural resource and human behavior management. 

The mountains where water first touches the islands is a place for sacred reverence and pure intentions. As the water flows down into the farmlands it needs to stay pure because it’s used to grow food like kalo and things used by people. Then as the water reaches the ocean, it still needs to maintain that purity because the runoff will impact all ocean life and the people who are sustained by it. The Ahupua’a system is such a solid example of native thinking and lifestyle choices that we can all learn from it as we decolonize our planet and learn to live more peacefully.

In this story series, we’ve asked Hawaiians who live in different parts of the modern Ahupua’a to share what they know about this interconnected system. Please read on and learn how to take better care of your personal watersheds.

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The full length film is posted above. Please enjoy and share.
All 6 episodes are posted to YouTube as well.

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Made in partnership with our friends at OluKai