Means to becoming an estuary
Canoe made with 100% recycled paper. Collage w/ handmade cottonwood paper and screenprints. The prints are collaged to create a satellite image of the delta. Coated with fiberglass and epoxy for waterproofing. Canoe structure, steps, and rib woodworking by James Gannaway and consultation w/ Bryce Green. Paper canoe design by Mare Liberum. Approx. 16 x 4 x 5 ft. 2017.
3/11/2018
We have been floating through the Grand Canyon for four days now and the river’s pace is much faster than it is in the delta. Its urgently falling downhill towards the delta, but unknowingly into Lake Mead. Most likely to evaporate. Or follow the American Canal to LA or San Diego. Maybe cross the border into Mexico in a couple of years. I’m thinking about where the water is going, but mostly present in how it feels to move with the water: learning to read water is a careful collaboration.
What would it be like to be a river that no longer reaches its mouth? To be traveling somewhere for miles and miles, along a route passed down in the water’s memory for ages, only to end up somewhere unexpected, foreign, or nowhere at all. There is an important difference, between choosing to embark on an unpredictable journey and being forced to take an unintended course.
In the delta reading water did not involve observing a current but rather following the voices, maps, stories, canals, and fields that embody the delta now. The canoe served as a vessel for conversations-a talking point or a spectacle of sorts to learn and listen; a tool for noticing how our freshwater bodies fill the space the Colorado River so longer does. Our freshwater bodies were working towards the sea to become an estuary ourselves.
