I’ve come here to the shores of Great Salt Lake to notice,
to gather details, to pay attention to whatever she might teach me.
Today it is a raven’s slick black body gliding and effortlessly perching from a rock,
surveilling its territory, lone sentinel. Silence, broken
only by the chukar’s chuckles, hidden in sagebrush, heard, but not seen.
A young coyote leaps, their buff coat the color of the grass.
The feel of bison patty in my hand, rough but oh so light,
stiff and pulpy like Japanese washi paper.
The sky, so blue, so vast, punctuated by the few clouds captured on Frary peak.
Phragmites, orange tassels reaching for blue sky, seeds patiently waiting for winds.
Bare feet gingerly picking over crusted dried lakebed,
then sinking with sweet relief when we finally reach the wet softness of her shore.
Children splashing, fully clothed, rolling, full of sand.
Mid-February and warm, their delight
in her salty water reminds us what it is to touch innocence.
My dog pulls me eagerly across the distance to the receding shore,
eager for water until his nose and tongue tell him that she may not be what you expect.
A brisk morning,
rewarded with the beating wings of eagles,
beating a rhythm down to us from a celestial dimension.
Some days it is a pilgrimage,
a chance to be reminded of what it feels like
to be small in her Greatness.
Some days I come to her shores to discover a balm,
though the salt stings my skin,
it heals the ills I did not know I carried.
To sit under her vast sky, engulfed by silence
and rocks, with their mysterious whisperings of deep time.
I feel elemental, brought back to the simplicity of bone and brine.
A clear voice reaches out over her parched shores,
singing praises to the four directions
language I have never heard before,
yet I hear the call of ancestors
are they yet lost to us?
are we yet lost to them?
A shiver down my spine,
and I remember that I am sacred too.
“Please bring the waters back.”
Lara Chho is a naturalist and a lover of Utah’s wild places. She led guided hikes on Antelope Island throughout the 2022, 2023, and 2024 winter vigils.