The Great Salt Lake that gave Salt Lake City its name, or the Salton Sea, might seem far away from the Sonoran swathes of Tucson. But Tucson author and Arizona Luminaria contributor Caroline Tracey says they can teach us about the region we live in, and about ourselves.
That’s the driving idea behind Tracey’s new book, “Salt Lakes,” which explores the way these bodies of water have been understood through history, alongside Tracey’s own journey into her queer identity and finding love.
The environmental history and personal narrative intertwine with meditations on cattle ranching and Russian literature to create a book that spans both the internal and external landscape of the writer.
After more than a decade of essays and editor conversations circling the topic, Tracey’s book “Salt Lakes” was published this spring.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you want local readers to get from the book?
This book is called “Salt Lakes,” obviously, and that refers to the type of landform which is kind of like a closed valley, more of a bowl or a basin. We have those in Arizona, and the most recognizable one is the Willcox Playa, which is very close to Tucson. That has the same sort of dynamic I describe in other places in the Southwest: where water pools and collects and you end up with a salt crust. It’s also why it’s so rich in bird life. They kind of create these unusual oases in the landscape.
There were a lot of concepts I found helpful in understanding the history, and maybe the future, of the West. The public trust doctrine was one of them.
The public trust doctrine is, I think, a very important concept. It is the idea that states are responsible for protecting the waterways within their boundaries. It comes originally from ancient Rome, where it was important to protect waterways for navigation and commerce. And that it sort of became part of American law following a court case in Chicago regarding the Lake Michigan waterfront.
It transformed in California where they realized, well maybe the public trust doctrine doesn’t only apply to navigation and commerce but also ecological and recreational values. There was a test case at Mono Lake, and the state supreme court determined that yes in fact the public trust doctrine did apply and it actually sort of superseded privately held water rights.
It became this impressive environmental legislation moment of saying the common good is something that can actually trump private rights. It would be really interesting to try and apply it to stop data centers because I think that you could make the case that the common good water protections are being violated.
What can the future of salt lakes tell us about the future of the West?
Salt lakes can seem like anomalies in the landscape, but what is really important about them is that they are the end point of a lot of the West’s water systems. When they’re in bad shape that reflects poorly on the rest of the system. Upstream, maybe things aren’t showing their wear and tear quite as much. My own curiosity about salt lakes, seeing these landscapes and wanting to learn more, sent me on the journey to learn a lot about the history of irrigation and water diversion which really sort of turns out to be like the story of how the American west was settled and developed for industry and agriculture.
Salt lakes sort of pretty quickly open out onto much bigger questions about the region.
You write about the role of the Mormon Church in water policy. What surprised you about that connection?
The chapter about Great Salt Lake talks a lot about the history of the Mormon settlement of Salt Lake City and the surrounding area. When I was working at High Country News, covering climate justice, I had a conversation with some colleagues where they were like, “We should cover religion more in the West.” I had this sort of long-standing interest in Great Salt Lake.
So, I was like, “Oh, well, I wonder what’s up with the Mormon Church in Great Salt Lake.” It turned out to be really interesting that there were these two groups of environmental activists, one focused on education and one focused more on lobbying and political involvement.
I think they understood themselves to be trying to raise environmental awareness in a culture that doesn’t necessarily always promote environmental activism… They had recognized that there was a place for a sort of religious voice. I found that very inspiring because it was a story showing that people don’t have to be complacent. They had a really fascinating vocabulary drawn from their religious beliefs and culture that they would apply to thinking about the landscape around them.
How did thinking about queerness and queer ecology help you understand the natural world?
The book has both a mixture of environmental journalism and personal narrative, and they come together in different ways and different moments in the book. Sometimes they’re sitting next to each other, and sometimes they’re sort of intersecting. One of the concepts I found really beneficial was this idea of queer ecology, which has various applications.
In queerness as a lens on biology, we are not thinking of the male-female reproduction that we’re taught in ninth grade but actually noticing that in the natural world there are all types of reproduction and kinship structures. I was seeing those in salt lakes as I learned about them.
One of the things that people talk about is sort of resonance between queer people being scorned or isolated from society, and [some] landscapes have had a similar experience. There is a vitality and fertility to them, even though it can be scorned or overlooked, it is very much present. It is just a matter of noticing it.
An amazing thing about queerness is family is where you find it. In the natural world there are lots of examples of different types of kinship. Like Wilson’s Phalarope, which is a bird that migrates via salt lakes. They have this very unusual family structure where the male is the one who takes care of the nest and the woman takes multiple partners. It’s sort of amazing that in the natural world we accept biodiversity as an unquestionable good and I think it’s also important to see that this sort of diversity of family structures are important in human life too.
I found that to be very true about salt lakes — even though people say like ‘oh, those are sterile and barren and ugly and weird’ they actually have a lot of beauty and a lot of vitality in them. Reading queer theory and talking with queer friends was opening up this whole other possible dimension of future and kinship
Does Tucson appear in this book as an unacknowledged character?
When I picture writing the book in my head, I am looking out my desk window onto my yard [in Tucson].
It was a marathon of every day advancing a little bit. I’m basically sitting at my desk — I’m not that good at writing in varied places. And we have hummingbirds out the window and woodpeckers and all the Tucson plants and flora and fauna really accompanied me in the writing of this book.
And for clearing my head: I live pretty close to Casa Video.
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