- On a windy day like today, you'll spot plenty of ripples in the water here at the Great Salt Lake.

Those small waves can often be used as a metaphor for how people spend their lives trying to make a difference in this world.

One poet is using words to do just that, aiming her pin at rivers in hopes of saving Utah's treasure.

- [Nan] Who is the lake to you?

Among other possibilities, this lake is a great protector.

For over a century and a half, the sailing waters have saved us from ourselves by blanketing toxic heavy metals dumped into our watershed.

Even now, what is left of her body lies between us and a perpetual dust storm.

If we stop choking off her life force, she would continue to protect us from our poisons.

Go to the lake or imagine yourself at the shoreline.

Pause at the water's edge long enough to listen.

Consider her vast and vibrant life.

You too will be able to sense the dynamic intelligence of a life born before recorded time.

We feel like we're at this tipping point where we're about to lose the lake.

That is true.

We may also be at another tipping point where we're about to genuinely fall in love in a way that is visible to each other.

Welcome!

Thanks for coming.

I really appreciate you being here.

It's so awesome.

We're in a lake bed made by the Great Salt Lake anciently.

In very direct relationship with the lake, is the Jordan River is flowing directly into the lake.

I'm a lake facing poet and I am a facilitator of a writing practice called river writing.

I'm on river banks and receding shorelines all the time, inviting people to write and just express their relationship basically to water, to the lake.

This is something sometimes I say before we do slow walking.

Enjoy your life.

(sound bowl reverberating) River writing is a community-based, generative writing practice.

It's also a listening practice and it's a way to be together in creativity rather than isolated working on your own.

I often say that it's like the opposite of the idea where an artist goes into the garret.

Nobody knows, you know, what they're doing and they're painting and they come out with a masterpiece.

River writing is the opposite in that way, like together in the mess.

You might recognize your own words in this.

This river is the track of a tear.

This river is a singer, songwriter.

Ah, this river, how wise you are.

This circle is a bed of compassion.

We know in our hearts that life warrants our reverence, our respect, our humility, and the life of a water body not less than the life of a human body.

Poetry and word choice makes a visible.

♪ The river is flowing.

Human's weren't always this disconnected.

We once knew, so we just need reminding.

About a year ago, I listened to the RadioWest story, the first one of the series that's now running.

Dr. Bonnie Baxter, explaining this current peril of the lake.

- [Dr. Bonnie] Having those scientific numbers basing this on keystone species that if these don't exist, the lake will collapse as an ecosystem.

- [Interviewer] How close are we to the tipping point?

- [Dr. Bonnie] It's possible that we reach that tipping point by November of this year.

Yes.

It's terrifying.

- [Interviewer] Really?

- [Dr. Bonnie] Yes.

We're about two feet in lake elevation from reaching a point where the foundation of this ecosystem will be decimated.

- It was like quite a shock.

The dire situation that we're in was news to me.

I started writing obsessively really.

I think that led to dreaming about the lake.

I would get parts of poems, and that led to beginning the poem, "Irreplaceable".

This idea of collecting enough lines to reflect the square mile area of the lake.

Started out with the ambition to collect 1,700 lines, that's the conservative size of a restored lake.

Now the lake is under 1,000, maybe under 900 square miles.

Because I thought I would have to write a lot of the lines myself, it turns out over 400 people participated in that poem.

It's now over 2,500 lines.

- I love that.

- Thank you so much for coming.

Welcome.

It's amazing we're all here together.

How beautiful.

When praise began to flow, we watched the water rise along both sides of the causeway.

- A very salty lifeless lake, not much for pioneers to harvest but a point of wonder for restless travelers.

- Imagine your ankles covered in water, she said, as we approached the emptiness where the lake should be.

A prayer for restoration, a belief in her bright future.

- We were a great lake, dreaming herself whole again.

Once you had everything, once we had everything.

Art is really the only frequency I know of that will grow our empathy that could change culture.

And the really good news is we're all artists at heart.

We're born to sing.

We're born to write.

We're born to be in relationship in these ways, in ritual.

We need to repair the breech between humans and the rest of the world.

It's one of two futures.

It's a restoration where humans really meet this emergency with the the size of measures that it would take.

So it's not like half measures, it's not polite.

And we could have this beautiful restoration that could still happen.

But that window is closing.

It's closing really fast and we have to look at the other possibility too.

And the lake really has given me poems to express both futures.

When praise began to flow, 11 islands recovered their autonomy microbialites sighed with relief.

When praise began to flow, the dust subsided, metals resettled on the sea floor, arsenic and mercury were lulled back to sleep, blanketed once more by the great weight of water.

The lake is crying, "I thirst".

We must respond with water.

Restoration and repair will be led by ordinary brokenhearted people who are paying attention, by me and by you.

Let us turn our hearts and faces toward the lake and do everything we can do.