How Water Finds the Sea - Pete Wintersteen
As a coastal New Englander in Wyoming with a view of the Continental Divide, when I think about the ocean, my thoughts begin with mountain headwaters and like the tributaries of a river, branch into the manifold constraints we impose on our global freshwater resources.
The water that drains from Wyoming, drains to one of four termini. A smallest volume and shortest path ends in the Great Salt Lake, which has no outlet. Some water flows via the Green River to the Colorado River, towards the Gulf of California. To the west, it flows into the Pacific Ocean from the Snake to the Columbia rivers. Many other paths that originate in Wyoming lead to the Missouri, then to the Mississippi, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico.
The distance between the terminus of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and that of the Mississippi River in the Deep South is 2,200 miles in Euclidian terms. But when river lengths are measured from headwaters rising near Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park, the total distance of water flowing in opposite directions is over 5,100 miles. That’s farther than the distance from Seattle to Paris. Here, the ultimate journey of a raindrop, or perhaps more likely a snowflake, is determined by a gust of wind over the Great Divide.
From each of these aquatic pathways we extract value and into them we release pollution. As gravity pulls downward, human waste and refuse and industrial byproduct aggregate in our fresh water. Water that melted at elevations upwards of 14,000 feet gains in toxicity as it flows through thousands of miles of agricultural land. Aggressively applied industrial fertilizer and many other chemicals join the hydrological mixture. Polluted water flows down the Missouri, into the Mississippi, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico where these fertilizers make the ocean water hypoxic and marine life suffocates amid algal blooms.
To the west water is dammed and diverted for benefit of cattle and the famous Idaho potato. Hugely productive dams here produce the most hydroelectric power in the United States, but deny fish their ancient migratory routes. The Columbia flows for fifty miles past a decommissioned nuclear site its waters once cooled, where the plutonium that was detonated at the Trinity Site and over Nagasaki was refined.
The fate of the southern course is perhaps the saddest fate for a river to meet. Extractive use of the Colorado River is so acute that it has been severed entirely from the ocean. Today, water that winds through the Grand Canyon never arrives at the sea. What’s been lost is an incredibly diverse river delta, as well as the way of life of people who inhabited it for thousands of years. What’s been gained is intensive agricultural production in xeric landscapes as well as green lawns, golf courses, and in-ground pools for desert cities.
Everything comes from the ocean; continents rise from it; terrestrial flora and fauna evolved out from it; it produces more breathable oxygen than the rainforests. But all actions we take are actions ultimately taken against the ocean, and everything eventually returns to it. Astronauts returning from the lunar Apollo Missions splashed down into the ocean. Ice frozen in glaciers long before the advent of human civilization melts away in a warming climate. Whether poisonous waste, the quiet meander of a Wyoming river through cottonwood forests, or memories of a childhood spent peering into tide pools, everything flows to the sea.
Pete Wintersteen is a conservationist and photographer from Greater Boston. After spending several years in the field of wildlife conservation, he began studying art as a means to communicate scientific and ecological stories. In 2019, he earned his MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley College of Art and Design. Recent topics he has covered include invasive plant species in Massachusetts, the rhinoceros and pangolin poaching crisis in Namibia, feral horses in the American West, and the uranium mining industry in southeastern Utah.
@petewintersteen