Great Salt Lake Voices

Stan Jarvis

I have gone to the Lake several times a year for decades It’s big enough to take kids there and use the curvature of the Earth to measure our planet’s diameter.

—Stan Jarvis

Kurt

The Lake is a huge part of what makes Utah UTAH. Its poor health reflects on all Utahns.

—Kurt

Amy Brunvand

I like to go to the Lake to watch sunsets and see birds. It provides beauty and peacefulness.

—Amy Brunvand

Dennis Hartley

We love to sail on the Great Salt Lake, however this is no longer possible due to the low water!
—Dennis Hartley

Gary Parrish

From a child going to swim in the lake at Antelope Island State Park to now enjoying the amazing refuges that surround the Lake, it is a constant wonder in my life.
—Gary Parrish

Erin Gessaman Rabke

I love the lake. I especially treasure the birds. I care about her thriving life.
—Erin Gessaman Rabke

Susan Gomez

In the past I enjoyed the beach and floating in the lake. Now, watching the sunset and visiting the nearby bird reserves.
— Susan Gomez

Barbara Chavira

The Great Salt Lake is not only a Utah treasure but a national treasure which we must care for and preserve for future generations.
—Barbara Chavira

Megan Weiss

The Lake is inspiring and makes me feel at home.
—Megan Weiss

Megan van Frank

The Great Salt Lake is a weird and wonderful place. I love catching the whiff of salty inland sea when the breeze is just right. I love the sense of wilderness it provides so close to home.
—Megan van Frank

Lake Effect

Lake Effect is an audio storytelling series about the Great Salt Lake produced by Utah Public Radio.

Aimee Van Tatenhove and Ellis Juhlin

Great Salt Lake is seeing birds sometimes by the thousands and feeling like you're stepping into a scene in the middle of a nature documentary.

Alek Konkol

I would call myself a person who likes to bike around the lake. When I was riding along it, and one side is dark red, and the other side is blue…that was crazy. You look to your right, and it feels like you're in some sort of like Star Wars universe.

Bonnie Baxter

The lake calls scientists, it calls artists, it calls poets. And it's just a very special place.

Jeff Manwaring

There's no beachfront property or hotels around it. And it is super buggy around the shore, but once you get out on the lake, it's definitely one of the prettier places I've seen.

Jim Steenburgh

I look at the Great Salt Lake as this barometer of climate change, and humans and what we're doing to the hydrologic system that we have here.

Josh Craner's 6th grade class

I barely knew anything about the lake. And then I started sixth grade, and my amazing teacher over there taught me about the lake. You kind of fall in love with the lake, in a way.

Margaret Pettis

Our sailboat tips—
we are a pelican wing
skimming the turquoise
cabochon of Utah sky.

Molly Blakowski

I don't want to look back and regret not doing more to protect the lake. It's not too late for me and the many other friends of Great Salt Lake to act big act now and do what we can to preserve Great Salt Lake and all of the amazing ecosystem services it offers.

Nan Seymour

[My] poem is called irreplaceable. There's praise and lament, there's grief in this poem as well. I feel like some people will turn away because it's really hard to bear. It's hard to be with a great body, dying of thirst. It's hard. But if we look away, we won't change it.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox

It's endlessly fascinating, sometimes buggy and smelly, but an ever beautiful feature of this unique place that we call home. ... The Great Salt Lake is an asset that we all must treasure and we must preserve.