more archaeology
Earlier this week I posted a text heavy blog post which was all about my interest in archaeology and how I got into it, despite having no professional connection to the field whatsoever.
Movies about a dam
But in the past couple days I’ve been thinking even more about it, and thought I’d share a few more things to give you an idea of how big of a hobby this is for me these days.
Yesterday, Brooke and I went to a screening of two good documentary films on Glen Canyon and the modern effort to figure out what to do with the reservoir people call Lake Powell.
The first was one I’d seen before, called Glen Canyon Rising (24m). It was produced by the Crow Canyon Archeological Center, and directed by Laura Brown. I’d seen it online a few months ago as part of Crow Canyon’s popular webinar series. I’ve learned a lot from that series, which is normally online presentations about archaeology research projects in the Four Corners area. In fact, probably half of the credit I have for the PAAC program are from “attending” these online lectures. Laura Brown was here in Denver to present the film in person, and I got to meet her, which was great. She told me I made her cry one time. Good cry, not bad cry. After the online screening of her film, I gave some feedback in the Zoom chat to say something like “Katie would be very proud of you.” “Katie” refers to folk singer and river activist Katie Lee (something Laura and everyone involved in Glen Canyon activism knows). I got a chance to meet and talk to Katie before she died, and have all her books. In fact, we have a famous poster of Katie up on the wall in our bedroom.
The second film was the main event of the evening, called What the River Knows (34m). The film was directed by Will Buckley and Diego Riley. The film is currently on a tour of mostly the Four Corners states, organized by Glen Canyon Institute. I’ve been a member of GCI for 25 years or so, since shortly after they were founded. In fact, I was their webmaster back in 1999 and 2000. As a result of that, I got to go on my first rafting trip of the San Juan River, which sparked my interests in the Bears Ears area, river rafting, and Ancestral Puebloan rock images. This film seemed like the better produced of the two; I’m guessing it had a much larger budget. Whereas Glen Canyon Rising was something I could have personally created, What the River Knows includes footage from a lot of sources, music, graphics, etc.
Wanna see one of both of the films? The first one is on YouTube, right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzLc9ku6s4Q. For the second, you’ll need to track down where it’s playing next on its tour. I think this is the page with the best info for that: https://glencanyon.org/what-the-river-knows/
My brain
You can see a lot of these things are intertwined in multiple ways. I slapped together a mind map to show some of my main related interests.
Celebrate Bears Ears
Lastly, I got an email this morning from the Bears Ears Partnership folks. I’m a volunteer in their Visit With Respect Ambassador program, and was fortunate to be able to attend the 2026 Celebrate Bears Ears event in Bluff, Utah earlier this month. That’s the silver lining of getting laid off, I guess - more time for hobbies and special interests.
Here’s the web page they set up with a summary and photos from the weekend: https://bearsearspartnership.org/newsblog/celebrate-bears-ears-2026