Thank you Utah State Poet Laureate, Lisa Bickmore, for the sacred gift of your attention. Thanks to your love and labor, this collective witness will continue to speak on behalf of our irreplaceable ecosystem.
Terry Tempest Williams and Brooke Williams, thank you for finding us at the frigid shoreline, for walking along the water with us to count the dead bodies of birds, and for amplifying the voice of the lake in endless ways.
Thank you to all stewards of Antelope Island, especially Wendy Wilson and Trish Ackley, for your essential presence.
Thank you Diana and Gary Hedlund for inviting me to listen to Dr. Bonnie Baxter’s clarion call. The three of you conspired to turn my heart forever towards the lake.
Chandler, Denise, Cleve, and Derek, thank you for creating the first praise chorus of many. You gave birth to an essential and enduring movement.
Darren Parry, thank you for calling us to kinship through your stories and for being able to see us on the shore when we were barely visible to others.
Thank you Jaimi Butler, beloved scientist-in-residence, for bringing us belly laughs along with saline facts. Thank you for your biology lessons, especially your infamous fully embodied demonstrations.
Thank you Christy, Lara, Mary Anne, Amy, Giuliana, Debbie, milo, Nini, Moudi, Taylor, Sarah, and Carter who came early and called in others in with your particular gifts.
Justin Jensen, you helped out in more unglamorous ways than I can count. Thank you Chloe Skidmore, for giving your meticulous attention to proofreading and counting lines. Thank you Rachel Bates for that first big holy yes and for giving the vigil a home the first year, and to Amanda & Pablo for sheltering us the second.
Thank you Willy Palomo for showing up early and staying late, and for your many forms of love and inspiration in between.
Thank you Therese Berry and Sarah May for continuing the ministry of Making Waves Artist Collective.
Thank you, John Meier and the filmmakers of PBS Utah, for documenting our community effort throughout. To John’s vigil baby Henry, we will not stop working to replenish the lake for you.
Thank you Utah Humanities for the last three years of essential support.
Thank you to our good friends at Third Sun Productions, for all of the love and donated labor that has gone into giving this poem a beautiful and shareable online home.
Thank you to everyone at Friends of Great Salt Lake, especially to Lynn de Freitas for decades of selfless leadership and to Holly Simonsen, our sacred lake’s great ecopoetic collaborator, for encouraging authentic lake-facing expression through every medium.
Thank you to my earth ethics teachers: Deena Metzger, Tom Hirons, KJ Song, and Eli Nixon.
Sav Pearson, thank you for all the ways you loved this book into being.
Thank you to my loving mother Marybeth, and her mother Amelia who taught her how to float in the lake when she was nine. Thank you to my brother Todd for loads of
wood, homemade soup, and unflagging support. Thank you to Grammy and the myriad of ancestors who encouraged me to keep vigil.
To my beloved Mustafa, thank you for supporting through three long winters with great patience and tremendous presence. Thank you for being a true Abdal who knows there is a soul in all things.
Thank you to the many members of the River Writing Collective. You have made these vigils not only possible but improbably joyful.
Diversity, like water, is life. Our life force relies on liminal spaces and marginalized identities.To our queer and transgender family, thank you for teaching us to uphold the sacrosanct sovereignty of bodies. You are exemplars and we would be nowhere without your leadership.
Great Salt Lake, our fierce protector, beloved teacher, and dear companion, thank you for making this wave-made world! You inspired every word.
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Dear Reader,
If you think you might be part of this great lake-facing movement, you are! We belong to the lake and each other. Your voice is essential and your presence is everything.
with love, reverence, and tenderness for life,
nan