The Lake needs bread

It is written: Thou shalt not kill, nor do anything like unto it

If I were a snowflake 

I’d do my best to fall into the lake

I don’t trust my melted body would make it otherwise

It is written: Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things

Have you ever faced something much bigger and stronger than you

That is somehow completely at your mercy?

Horses. Backhoes. Whales. Lakes. It creeps me out.

It is written: The fulness of the Earth is yours

We live in the wet shadow of the flattest sea

Almost indifferent to the moon

Her tide rises with the snow and falls with the sun

It is written: For benefit and use

That shallow breathing humidifies our home, frosts our mountains

A misty oasis for life that can survive nowhere else

Refugees with two legs, four legs, six, eight, twenty-two

It is written: To please the eye

A trickster’s trickster

She makes saltwater from freshwater

Squeezed from twenty-two thousand square miles of dry land

It is written: To gladden the heart

We call her one body, but she is seven at least

Our own Fitcher’s Bird

Her severed arms each a different color and salinity

It is written: With judgment

She uses the artificial fingers we have carved from her flesh

To cradle five million eggs and fifty trillion cysts

In our generosity, we leave twenty-two cysts per liter

It is written: Not to excess

She harnesses our violence to preserve life

Unnaturally fresh, unnaturally salty

Unnaturally high, unnaturally low 

It is written: Neither by extortion

We use one million acre-feet too much water each year

Just over one cubic kilometer

One billion tons or one Utah Lake too much

It is written: Trouble me no more

Neglect is harder to cure than malice

Indifference is harder to uproot than ignorance

Is overuse a dominant gene?

It is written: Doth man offend God?

She can vanish and reappear

A century-long reset to sweep the watershed of ditches and dikes

Her breath laced with ashes instead of living steam

It is written: Do the works of righteousness

What does it mean to save the one who gave you life?

What does it mean to fail to save the one who gave you life?

There is a Utah Lake’s worth of water to be had

It is written: You shall receive your reward

From Sego lilies to potatoes to alfalfa to turfgrass

What are we sowing?

What will we reap?

It is written: Even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come

In a basket, in a handcart

In a resolution, in a bill

In a newsletter, in a poetry reading on a hill

We will gather up her parts 

and our own

Poem by Ben Abbott read at the 3rd annual Songs Scored by Shorelines: the Irreplaceable Poetry Reading on March 22nd, 2025

Interdependence Day

 On February 7th, I got a text from a dear friend.

"Happy Independence Day!"

I doubted myself for a few moments. I lose track of time often, but this seemed extreme even for me. Then it clicked. The seventh of February is the anniversary of my divorce.

The last year has been the most disruptive and challenging in my life. It has felt like falling down a cliff while trying to hold four children to my chest. I've hit my head a lot. Sometimes on the cliff. Sometimes with my own palm. At times, we have been closer than ever. At other times, the kids have felt completely out of sight. I have struggled with intense feelings of self doubt, helplessness, and vulnerability. This has stimulated the most growth and healing I have ever experienced. Gratitude flavors the bitterest moments of dread and danger. So far, nothing has dulled the consolation that whatever happens, at least I am not still in that relationship.

I thought this "sketch to image" AI by one of the kids captured the frazzled and beautiful vibe of the last year. I don't know if I am the one with big hair, or the tiny chrysalis on a twig.

One of the most painful and important lessons of the last year is that divorce, like baptism, is a beginning, not an end. The storms haven't stopped. 

I thought that there would be peace after the papers were signed. When that didn't happen, I hoped that the kids' needs would unite us behind a shared cause. When the opposite occurred, I prayed that establishing a second household would mark the beginning of reconciliation. Instead, it feels like my ex wakes up every day with hate in her heart and war on her mind. I now look back to messages we sent during the divorce and just after and marvel at the level of civility and cooperation.

One night when we were talking through some hard things, we went down to the lake. The tinkles of the ice and the wet heat of the open water helped the problem feel small.

Another friend mentioned that reconstruction after a divorce takes at least two years. I don't know about timelines, but I do know that my identity and sometimes my sense of reality have been deconstructed (or more properly torn down) by a sequence of realizations. Each came like a consecutive hurricane. No time to rebuild or even rush for cover. Maybe that is exactly what I needed. Skin against the storm. Hands protecting the back of my neck. Just my body huddled and sandblasted on a pitted foundation. 

The first realization was seeing how deep my denial had been about our relationship. It was so bad for so long, but I tolerated and participated in the daily disfunction. Sometimes I was willfully blind, pretending things were fine to avoid having to reckon with the needed upheaval. This wasn't something that therapy or even a new house could fix. Other times I was just ignorant of how dark and intractable the dynamic was. The distance and continued behaviors from my ex brought a deep sense of grief and relief. Leaving was the only choice. At least it was the only good and honest choice. 

Second, I realized how intertwined our lives still were. During the divorce, my ex pivoted from a place of resentment and resistance to a policy of full frontal attack. After the decree was signed, I think she experienced every act of compliance as a new concession towards me personally. Rather than feeling like we had negotiated a mutually supportive arrangement, she started using the language of exploitation. She had been forced to agree to those concessions. If the world were just, I shouldn't be a part of our children's lives. She is so committed to her grievance narrative that she can't fathom or condone a step toward something healthy for us or for me.

Third, I realized how minimal my influence was and always had been on this person. No peace offering or carefully worded message would soften her heart. If I resist, she fights harder. If I give in, she concludes her hard ball tactics are working.

As things have gotten harder, the sacred value of time together has become brighter. O, the joy of breakfast with these glorious children.

The one thing my ex and I agree on is that the kids shouldn't have to go through this. My ex believes that it is my fault for divorcing her. I believe that it is our fault for not figuring out how to coparent. The deepest feelings of loss and regret come from reflecting on the painful and impossible situations our children have been put in over the past year because of our failure to reconcile and move forward. Delayed ordinations, cancelled trips, conflicting accounts, and traumatic communication (both the opaque silence and the white-hot explosions).

In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the following in L'existentialisme est un humanisme: 

In seeking freedom, we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on our own. Certainly, you can define personal freedom in a way that is independent, but as soon as there is interaction, I am obliged to seek the freedom of others at the same time as my own, I cannot reach for my freedom without making my goal the freedom of others at the same time.

Though I have often yearned to divorce my ex a second time to see if that could create more distance, I see now that independence isn't the goal. Our lives are forever linked, and to wish that away would destroy the best things in my life. I now believe that a loving dependence is the goal. My friends Bob and Gloria Rees often say, "In a conflict or disagreement, make sure to take a breath and ask, what is the most loving thing I can do next?" In this coming year, I will make that my guiding question. In my relations with my ex, my new love, my children, my political opponents, my students, and all who I encounter, how can I better show sincere love? How can we move from a wish of solitary independence to a relationship of connection and love?

Let us not make any weapons of war...except wooden swords. Caspian bought the spray paint himself.

Happy Interdependence Day.

“freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”

Jean Paul Sartre 1972

Crossing Utah Lake on a bike

 On January 24th, I woke up with a fully-formed thought in my mind.

"I bet the lake is frozen."

Utah Lake hadn't frozen yet this year, but we had had highs in the teens. The lake is huge and powerful, and the ice conditions can change in a matter of hours, so I knew the window was short.

I rearranged my plans, and I took off from my office around 3:30.

I started just north of Utah Lake State Park. The ice was thin near the shore, but it often is. There isn't any lake ice report, so it's crucial to assess conditions continuously and be super careful. I've done a lot of frozen river and lake travel in Alaska, but Utah Lake is by far the most intimidating (and dangerous) frozen water body I've ever traversed (read to the end for the ending).

There were a lot of pressure ridges where the ice had buckled and stacked.

It made for slow rolling, but I always like to have a few extra layers of ice under me.

Things were smoother away from the shore. The lake's size and power always awes me. Whenever there was a change in ice texture or color. I would stop to tap and assess. This gap had frozen over enough to hold me.

Crossing a pressure ridge. There was a little bit of overflow on the ice.

The lake is surrounded by cities, but it feels every bit as wild as it ever has been out in the middle.

This frozen slush ice texture was the most common. I love to think what it would be like to watch it form.

My favorite mountains and lake.

As I neared Pelican Point on the west side, the sun illuminated Vineyard, Lindon, and American Fork.

Ever since I frostbit my nose in Alaska, I wear this stylish nose guard.

The ice thinned out substantially 100 yards from shore. I almost turned around, but found a path on the ice ridges.

The ridges were around 8 feet tall.

Smoother riding, but I don't like how it cracks and creaks.

Peeking over the ridge.

I just spent a minute on Pelican Point and then hit the ice again.

It was starting to get dark, and I wanted to get back for a date with Emily. I didn't stop a single time to take pictures, so I don't have anything to show for the ride back. I used the new Orem Temple as my main waypoint, and it kept me on course. 

When I was 200 yards from shore, I decided to head to the boat dock. There was a car driving there, and it seemed like I would avoid the thin ice near the shoreline. I turned my back on the temple and headed straight south. The ice was buckled and bulged around the dikes at the mouth of the marina, so I walked the last few feet. Just before stepping onto the rocks of the dike, I broke through the ice. I thought it was just my leg, but then my whole body slipped through. I pushed my bike to the side to keep it from sliding in and in the hopes that I could use it to pull myself out.

The water pressed around me like a weighted blanket until my elbows hit the ice. I was able to pull myself out almost immediately, and I laughed loudly as I carried the bike up the rocks. A reminder of how real the risk is.

It felt like a metaphor for the last few years of my life. There have been some major dips in the water (the island lawsuit and divorce first of all), but they all occurred near help with a way back to the shore. I won't ever take this wild existence for granted. I am so grateful for all the lifeguards who have fished me and my kids out of the cold water so many times.