Can the fight for Mono Lake trace a path for restoring Great Salt Lake?

 Last weekend, a group of four of us drove 600 miles to Mono Lake.

Ski tour of East Provo Peak in May

My favorite time to ski is the summer. The real fun starts long after the resorts close and most people are thinking about tomatoes and river floats. During the summer ski season, if you can get to the snow, you can ski it.

Neither of us thought we'd need snow pants, but we both got home with frost-nipped fingers.

Provo Peak April ski tour

The winter of 2022/2023 was the best backcountry season of my life. The record snowfall combined with the personal challenges I was going through made a good excuse to get into the mountains. This year, I haven't been out nearly as much, but we worked in a spring tour yesterday.

Greg picked me up at 6, and we were geared up at the Rock Canyon parking lot by 6:30. We decided to climb Provo Peak. It is just of 11,000', and it felt like a good choice since I had broken my ribs on that mountain in June of 2023 on my last ski tour of the year.

Rock Canyon never disappoints. There were a couple of avalanche tongues across the trail about a mile up.

Above the Rock Canyon Campground, there was just enough snow on the road to put on our skis.

We didn't plan our matching creamsicle outfits, but we were pretty pleased.

We took a hard left a couple miles up the snowy road and followed this ravine almost all the way to the top of the mountain.

The sun came out, and the lake was beautiful.

We had to boot up about 50 feet at the top of the ravine (can you find me looking like a tree?).

There was about an inch of fresh snow, but it had been blown around. It accumulated on my skins, which added weight, but let me climb straight up (no switchbacks needed).

The final approach from the north was glorious, and not too windy.

You can see Cascade and Timpanogos in the background.

Greg is a much better skier than me, so he dropped off first into the main cirque.

Skiing is always fun, but especially with views like this.

We were expecting icy crust or corn snow at best, but instead the cirque was filled with graupel. It was super surfy and stupid fun.

We leapfrogged down the mountain. It turns out going downhill is almost as fun as climbing uphill.

The snow was good all the way down. Not bad for the end of April.

The pitch is super regular, and the snow was consistent enough to make endless turns.

Maple Mountain and Utah Lake in the background.

We traversed to find a fun and fresh line down the bottom third of the mountain.

The snow got slushy and grabby on the wide apron slope that leads back to the valley.

Still darn fun, IMO. I like the lower angle stuff better anyway.

Our snow line home had melted appreciably during the tour, so we put our skis back on our backs early.

It felt like summer at the mouth of the canyon. This view kills me every time. It's like a reminder not to lose yourself in the minutiae.

What's behind the governor's changing rhetoric on Great Salt Lake?

I'm grateful for Governor Cox's leadership on Great Salt Lake. As a farmer, I think he has the understanding and credibility to spur the profound changes in agricultural water use that we need to ensure a vibrant future in northern Utah.

Examples from around the world show that when a saline lake dies, farming goes down with it. Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of humanity's water use, and when demand exceeds supply, farmers are the the first to feel it. We need to learn from the more than 100 saline lakes in decline from Lake Poopó in Bolivia to the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. 

If we are serious about supporting Utah farmers, we have to reduce water demand to a sustainable level.

In early 2023, Governor Cox was publicly providing that leadership. He told Fox 13, "On my watch we are not allowing the lake to go dry. We will do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen." He doubled down on the topic in his State of State address, where he referenced our emergency report and committed Utah to pioneering a path to saline lake stewardship.

It was more than just talk. Under his leadership, the state made generational changes to water law and policy, including creating a mechanism for the lake to hold its own water rights. That let the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints give 20,000 acre-feet of water to the lake in perpetuity.

Things seem to have changed.

After the wettest winter on record and a temporary rebound of the lake level, Governor Cox's recent remarks have been markedly different. Starting in March of last year, he began to be defensive and critical of those describing the risk. He "governorsplained" (his term) an audience of environmental lawyers and scientists at the Stegner Symposium: Stop with all the doom and gloom. He had things under control.

On All Things Considered a few weeks ago, he excoriated our observation that the lake was on track to collapse within five years in 2022. "That prediction is laughable. It's a joke and everybody knows it's a joke. They were never serious about that...That's the 'doomerism' that is terrible for people."

Last week at the Spring Runoff Conference in Logan, he had a similar message. There is nothing to worry about. The state is spending a lot of money on the issue, and they have a plan. He'll take us out on the lake in five years for a picnic. Everything will be fine.

I hope he's right. However, the stakes are too high to stop at hope. We need to be looking at the risk with clear eyes. No one has figured out how to save a lake like this. Whole countries have failed, including nuclear powers, autocracies, and democracies. Utah's efforts have been preparatory so far, and as the Great Salt Lake Commissioner's strategic plan highlighted this winter, we still haven't saved enough water to make a measurable difference.

Is the change in rhetoric just a defensive pivot for the election year? Is it his sincere belief that there's nothing to worry about with the lake? 

I don't know, but I'm going to keep my focus on getting water flowing to our inland sea. Our health, economy, and ecosystem depend on a healthy lake. I used to get mad at politicians for not providing the leadership we needed, but I don't anymore. They are the followers, and they look to we the people for leadership.

Join the movement to help Grow the Flow.

The opposite of love

On February 7th at 3pm, the judge signed the divorce decree. It marked the official end of the most excruciating chapter of the most painful thing in my life: our marriage.

I feel like I’ve been fracked. All my capillaries have been blasted open and replumbed from the inside. But in the shattering, I see the first chance in a decade for real healing.

I’m surprised by the intensity and diversity of my insecurities. Will I be able to create the supportive environment for my children that was my motivation for divorcing? Will my kids see these efforts as signs of love and commitment or experience them as proof of selfishness and unsteadiness? Will I find someone who loves me for who I am? Will I be able to return that love in a healthy way? Heck, I'm not even sure how to talk about the divorce or whether I should write about it publicly.

On one hand, I'm totally uninspired by blaming. I've accepted that I won't ever understand or be understood by my ex or anyone who didn’t personally witness the dysfunction. The behaviors were too extreme, and out of respect (or pride), I don't want to rehash the grievances and betrayals. I want to forgive and heal. I want the same for her. Given her family history and temperament, I don't even know how responsible she is for the abuse. I think her beliefs about what was happening are disjointed from reality, but she would say the same about mine.

On the other hand, I feel a need to share what I've been through. I want to be honest about how these experiences have wounded and built me. I am just beginning to grasp how deep the scar tissue extends–how profoundly the pain of my marriage and the empowering trauma of ending it have shaped me. I lived for 16 years with someone who believed it was her mission to undermine my deepest values and counteract my sincerest attempts to do good. She saw me as an affliction to be tolerated, an object to be controlled, a resource to be extracted, or an opponent to be punished. She reveled in my failures and resented my successes.

There were also many good times and, of course, the four miraculous children we brought into the world.

I can’t erase any of it, nor would I want to. This imperfect union, now mercifully broken, is central to who I am. Instead, I’ll try to reflect and write a little. It is still so raw. If you read on, please know that I only write this to explore these experiences and learn from our life together. Remember this is just one side of a story with a thousand. Also, remember that Aimee Mann and Bob Dylan somehow knew about all of this from the beginning.

Things had been hard since before the beginning. I broke off the relationship after returning from a mission. We had written every week for two years. When I got back, I learned that she had been untrue, but more importantly, I sensed such profound unkindness and entitlement. I dated someone else, but we got back together after less than a year. Her intense possessiveness and uncompromising hunger were captivating. I told myself that any flaws were blessings because they would give me opportunities to develop forbearance and tolerance. After all, we are called to love our enemies, and we hope to be able to endure all things.

Once we were married, each milestone was accompanied by more pain and conflict. I naively thought that having a child would be grounding and perhaps stimulate awareness of others. We got pregnant within a year and talked earnestly about resolving our issues before the baby came. Instead, our relationship continued its descent into a chronic power struggle. Our daughter was born into a profoundly broken and unkind home.

The dysfunction was not due to a lack of awareness, at least not exactly. We went to more than a hundred counseling sessions with at least four therapists. We were blessed with devoted and thoughtful bishops and involved friends and family. We understood the negative cycles and knew where each other’s soft spots were. Maybe that contributed to the feeling that every day was a carousel of intentional humiliation. More and more, the disorienting ride was pulling in my children.

Though my ex took the lead in all our major decisions, each family move or professional development focused and intensified her resentment. Everything was deficient and unsatisfactory. Alaska was too dark, the French didn't speak enough English, and Utah was a land of constant oppression.

But none of those places were as bad as me. I was simultaneously not working hard enough and a workaholic, too progressive and stiflingly conservative, too permissive and unreasonably exigent. My gifts and support were taken as entitlements, while my wishes and needs were dismissed as unreasonable. My personal and professional progress was described publicly as a sign of my self absorption, while my setbacks and failures were damning evidence of my mediocrity and self deception. After six years of suffering through her Ph.D. together, I didn't merit a mention at her defense.

Her latent guilt and overt dissatisfaction saturated every crevice of our existence. The conflict spilled over from close friends and extended family to inundate our home.

The worst was the anger toward the children. In her mind, they were almost as personally responsible for her rage as I was. This is where I feel the most shame. I should have intervened years ago. God is love, and as parents, I believe we are called to make passage for that love to shower over our children. Our marriage was the opposite of love.

But I was too far in. Every relationship is hard, and everyone has problems, she told me. Nothing out of the ordinary. Because divorce wasn’t an option in her mind, she could take as long as she wanted to address the issues. I was the abusive one for even broaching the subject of separation.

Either out of self-protective optimism or sincere hope, I continued believe that a transformation was just one therapy session away. I had always thought of myself as Tam Lin, but she clearly possessed greater wildness. If I could only hold on long enough, she or I would relinquish our ferocity and unlock a relationship of mutual support and shared purpose.

My head spins and my heart palpitates as I try to assess my role in the relationship. I failed in a thousand ways. I had no sense of how to establish or maintain boundaries. I internalized and denied frustrations and concerns. I felt powerless, and my self loathing metastasized the longer I stood by.

What were my intentions? I don’t know how much of my vacillating came from a sincere desire to turn the other cheek or from a lack of courage.

When we moved back to Utah in 2017, Aimee Mann’s “Simple Fix” started playing in my mind on repeat.

When you don’t know how far someone will go, every dinner table discussion feels like a hostage negotiation. From physically attacking me in front of family and friends to financial deception, she displayed her dominance effectively. I didn't believe I could leave. I told myself that it was normal that my spouse would show up uninvited at work and verbally harass my students. Everyone’s partner occasionally tries to get them fired and secretly threatens their in-laws, right?

Anyways, I needed to create shelter for the children. Didn't I have the best shot at stabilizing the home environment by staying in the relationship? Though my justification now seems ludicrous, there were sacred moments, often when she wasn't there. She would storm out of the house or into her bedroom, and the kids and I could breathe. We could play. I taught them all to bike by three, and we took to the streets. We made movies and explored the neighborhood dumpsters. We read Dune, Ender's Game, and all the Narnia books. We danced to Sufjan Stevens and Stromae.

But we were sinking. I was falling apart.

Enemies find reasons to hate and fight you, whether you deserve it or not. Friends find reasons to love and uplift you, whether you deserve it or not. I was married to an enemy. Maybe I always had been.

Almost as if she could sense my growing independence and confidence, she started playing interference. She would barge in while I was reading to the kids, interrupt prayers with mocking corrections, and shout at the kids for following my requests and direction.

Comments on her Facebook forums augmented her outrage and validated her violence.

In 2019, I finally tried to divorce her. I wrote a letter explaining the issues and filled out the state's petition for divorce. I thought she would recognize that we had to create a better environment for the kids.

She said that if I left her, she would take the children out of state and never come back. She said the problem was my lack of commitment...plus our neighborhood and house in Orem. A potent combination of fear of losing my kids and desperate hope convinced me to give it another try.

We moved to Provo. The same hateful dance continued, only this time under a more expensive roof. She loved the house and said she'd changed. No longer enmeshed, no longer enraged, no longer responsible. I didn't see it.

The disdain was thicker than ever, and she told me I was unfair for not recognizing her progress. She'd bring up my deepest trauma and my parents' failed marriage as proof that I was the source of our problems.

In 2022, when the Utah Lake island developers sued me for $3 million, they were trying to shut me up and send a shot across the bow to quiet the scientific community. What they didn't count on was my history. I'd been hardened by 14 years of more intense and personal abuse than they could ever hope to wield. Their professional fixer Jeff Hartley seemed like a high-school bully compared to the daily assaults I'd been living with since 2008.

The ironic silver lining was that the two-year legal battle for the lake taught me about my rights. In America, a company can’t forbid criticism, and a spouse can’t force you to stay in a marriage by threatening to take your kids.

As things wound down with the lawsuit, I told her that I was done. I would work to make the transition as smooth as possible for the kids, including doing more than was legally required for support and housing. We agreed to work it out without lawyers and began meeting with a truly saintly friend and counselor who helped us establish a short term schedule. My ex asked me to move out while we filled out the paperwork, which I did voluntarily to reduce conflict.

My wise brother Tom told me once, “The person you don’t want to be married to is the same person you don’t want to go through a divorce with.” He was right.

The divorce destabilized every fault line and turned the conflict up to eleven. She secretly hired a lawyer and tried to follow through with her threat to take the kids away. She filed for sole custody, using my agreement to temporarily leave the house as evidence that I had abandoned the family. She claimed that I was an unfit father with no relationship with or concern for my own children. According to her sworn affidavit, my contribution to the family was 5%.

This attempted erasure caused me much more pain than I expected. Why should I care about my ex rewriting history? It was the future I should be focused on. I was fighting for a safe and supportive environment for my kids and myself. Even though her motion ended up just being legal posturing (she accepted joint custody as soon as she'd secured the provisions she wanted with the house), something about my life partner denying one of my most central identities (that of father) was devastating.

Maybe this hurt so bad because of my desire to see the good in our marriage–to salvage the joyful and passionate ingots from the burned heap of slag. Maybe it was my fear that the kids would start to believe her narrative, which she pushed on them at every opportunity. She couldn't remove them legally, so she reverted to attempts at emotional alienation that continue today.

As she emptied our joint account month after month, I borrowed money from my parents to hire a lawyer. The attorney told me I had to move back in or risk losing my visitation rights at least temporarily. She'd left me no other choice. She took the kids out of state and then didn’t come back. Rather than cohabitate or take turns in our home, she moved into an acquaintance’s house, completely upending our children's lives. In her mind, anything she did was justified because it was all ultimately my fault. If I had just stayed married, none of this would have been necessary.

After so many years in charge, she believed I had no rights and no autonomy. As the sole creator of everything good (or at least 95% of it), she deserved to carry on as before, with or without me.

We went through two failed mediations. The first one was almost 10 hours long. I was desperate to stabilize the situation for the kids, and the mediator kept pushing me to accept an arrangement with less than 50% custody. “This could be over tonight.”

I felt like I was on an operating table on a narrow mountain ridge. Under the pressure, the fabric of the universe stretched and shimmered around me, and all I could think was, “I can’t make such an important decision in these conditions.” It was the clearest example of a stupor of thought I have ever felt. Though I don't know where it came from, I am proud that I found the strength to say no.

Afterwards, I counseled with my siblings and parents and went into the second mediation with absolute clarity. I could compromise and consider anything else, but I would never give up time with my kids. That was the reason I had taken these drastic steps in the first place–to establish a home of love, support, and curiosity. The risk and uncertainty of going to trial was nothing compared to the prospect of giving up my time with my children. I told the mediator, and she told my ex. The negotiation broke down in just a few minutes.

Around a week later, the intervention of another friend (our former real estate agent) surprisingly revived our informal negotiations. The prayers and faith of hundreds of friends and family members softened hearts and helped us broker a deal with 50-50 custody. I will forever be grateful to all those who came to the aid of my family in our darkest hour. From uniting your faith in powerful fasting to gathering clothes and coats, thank you for your love.

She continues to wage war, but at least the divorce creates legal guardrails and a defined process to resolve conflict. I don't know how long she will keep using the kids as proxies in her fight, but I'll do what I can to create safety and space for them.

I know this isn’t the final chapter of my marriage. We will forever be connected through our four amazing children. But I also know that this is the end of the passive chapter of my marriage and life. After years of denial and shame, I have begun to exercise my agency to protect myself and create the environment I believe my children need.

Forgiveness and empathy have always come easy to me. But in this case, I don’t know how to move towards reconciliation after what my former spouse has done and continues to do. How am I supposed to understand when she tells the kids I don't love them, or when she won't let them wear their own coats or socks when they come over?

Maybe it's not about what she chooses anymore. I only made it through this crucible thanks to love from outside and love from within. I feel sandwiched between the glorious generosity of my parents and the irrepressible resilience of my children. What we have been through is rough, but it is no more than most are called to bear.

Once when I was soaking a little too long in self pity, my cousin Rachel called out of the blue. In typical Frandsen fashion, she cut to the chase with candor and charity. She gave me some guidance that has been booming in my soul ever since. She said, “Even when the worst is true–even if all the bad things that you believe about yourself or her are real, Christ can transform that into something beautiful and sacred.”

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

The Uses of Sorrow, 2007

Will we make 2024 the turning point for Great Salt Lake?

This Saturday, more than a thousand Utahns gathered at the state capitol to celebrate progress and support next steps in our efforts to restore Great Salt Lake. The number and diversity of participants makes me believe that we are in a different world than last year. I think that we are on the brink of something new. We are moving from preparation to implementation. We are graduating from impotence to action.

As usual, I went off script at the rally, but here is what I wrote in preparation:

Wow! Who is feeling something different about our future than when we arrived today? I am. Do you feel the power and love of our little band? One of the most important lessons of ecology and human history is that little things matter. Each of you matters.

To use Terry’s phrase, I feel something deeper than hope. For me, I call this faith. Faith is believing that we can create a better world, but faith is more than just a belief. Faith is the state of being where we let confidence overcome fear, but faith is more than just a state of being. Faith is an act of creation where we mobilize our love. That love moves us naturally from compassion to action and back to compassion. As we read in James, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”

Is our faith dead? No! You all prove that our body is alive, and our faith is sizzling hot.

Many of us gathered here last year to call for change. We asked for a clear target and decisive action to rescue the lake we all depend on. Many of us prayed for divine assistance to give us the time we needed to repent and change direction.

Things have changed since then, and like usual, not in the ways we expected. Some progress that seemed inevitable stalled and fizzled out. But some obstacles that seemed immovable have dissolved.

Tens of thousands of people have gathered at events throughout the region to support the Great Salt Lake rescue. New leaders have germinated all over the watershed, including students of all ages, citizens of all walks of life, and leaders in government and business. I have seen a change in the relationship between urban and rural communities—less blaming and less fear; more solidarity and even enthusiasm. Visionary farmers are making major changes, and pioneering cities are pushing the envelope to get water to the lake. We are seeing incredibly diverse community groups collaborate in new ways—forging friendships that will bless our region for generations.

Thanks to the tireless work of educators and reporters, our struggle has turned into the world’s best reality TV show. Hundreds of millions of people are tuned in to see if we can crack the code. Will we be the first community to save our saline lake, or are we just the next Aral Sea or Owens Lake? When there is coverage of Great Salt Lake, even the comments sections have gotten more constructive. The world is watching, and they are rooting for us.

Our elected officials are a part of this cultural shift. Just this week, the state established “a target range for the lake between 4,198-4,205 feet” through its office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner. Will we take a moment to celebrate and give thanks? The Great Salt Lake Watershed Enhancement Trust is slowly securing water for the lake, and some of the most powerful members of the Utah house and senate are working to implement and improve water policy.

All of this leads me to believe that saving the lake is exactly the crisis we have needed. Realizing our mutual dependence and relationship is helping shake us out of the division and despair that seem so persistent right now. Living up to our responsibility as caretakers and ancestors brings opportunity for service, belonging, and lasting love.

Like water, we are percolating towards the lake. Sometimes our progress is fast like a river rapid. Other times the change is quiet and patient, like the groundwater slowly flowing to the lake beneath our feet.

I want to invite you to do two things:

First, I want you to send some thank you emails, letters, or phone calls. Will you reach out to at least one elected official at the city, state, and federal levels to thank them for their work on Great Salt Lake?

Second, will you reflect on what unlocked your love for the lake? What experiences and what people helped you recognize your dependence on and love for the beating heart at the center of our universe? Will you commit to inviting at least one person a week to do the same? Most people care, but most people aren’t awake yet.

We are more than just a part of our watershed, we are the most important part right now. Great Salt Lake is inviting us to learn how to live in our high mountain home.

I sometimes hear from researchers that the Earth will be fine. Maybe humans will suffer, maybe we’ll even be extinguished, but the Earth has weathered far worse. That brings me such sorrow. Do we have such little compassion for the Earth that we can forget her love for us? Like all life in its impossible diversity, we are needed and loved.

The lake doesn’t need our despair; she needs our discipline.

The lake doesn’t need our anxiety; she needs our action.

The lake doesn’t need our resignation; she needs our resolve.

The lake doesn’t need our pity; she needs our policies.

Let’s get water to the lake.