One thing that I did not expect from Dr. Gretchen Henderson’s presentation on her book Life in the Tar Seeps was to be handed a stack of postcards and asked to write a short letter to a body of water. Any body of water. To the Pacific or the Atlantic Oceans, to the Seven Seas, to the river running along the Tijuana Estuary, to the puddle of water that never seems to dry up along the sidewalks where I live–any body of water that existed, no matter how big or small. I’ll admit, I was excited to write a giant, sweeping love letter to the Pacific Ocean as the entity that connects the California coast to the many seas of the Philippines. Initially, that’s what I wanted to write about. However, after the presentation, I found that I wanted to write a letter to the water store beside the Filipino restaurant in the shopping plaza near my house instead.
A large component of Dr. Henderson’s presentation was about nature conservation, but the aspect that stuck with me was the aspect of aesthetics in respect to what we choose to conserve. Whenever I think of nature conservation, I think of saving winding coastlines, lush green jungles, and sprawling forests. The tar pits in Utah’s Great Salt Lake are not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of nature conservation and the conservation of life within them. To be honest, I thought of tar pits as devoid of life before this presentation, so why should we protect a total wasteland that only serves as a graveyard for the living beings that fall prey to the sticky traps? ‘
As Dr. Henderson reveals in her presentation, these tar pits are naturally occurring, akin to the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, but the fact that there are more of them occurring is cause for concern. Climate change has caused more droughts in the Salt Lake area, causing the existing waters of the lake to dry up and recede. As the waters recede, more tar seeps out of the earth. These receding waters are home not to fish but to multiple forms of microbial life. Although the deaths of pelicans and coyotes and whatever happens to be trapped in the tar pits are considered a natural occurrence and a part of the circle of life, the cause for concern here are the receding waters of the Salt Lake and the microscopic lives that call those waters home.
Even in a “wasteland” filled with “death traps,” I learned that there was life and it was worth protecting in the same way that we want to protect wolves in the forests or whales in the oceans. It was in this “wasteland” that Dr. Henderson saw beauty and she shared that beauty in the short film that accompanies her book, where she voices over clips and images of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and the tar pits with field notes and ruminations on the role of art in helping nature conservation. What makes this drying salt lake any different from the ocean? The short answer: there is no difference. The waters that recede in this salt lake are the same waters that will make the ocean rise, as Dr. Henderson so aptly puts in the website of her book Life in the Tar Seeps.
In that same vein, what is the difference between the Pacific Ocean and the water store where my family refills our water jugs? There is no difference there, either. The water that sustains the turtles and whales is the same water that sustains me and my family. It is the water that we must conserve, no matter what shape or form it takes on.