A Different Day at the Lake

It was a hot summer’s day, perfect for a great time spent on the lake. We drove through

the winding canyon, on our way to East Canyon Reservoir. The truck puttering as it pulled the

boat up the road, our windows down making it easy for the smell of exhaust to graze our noses,

music blasting as the wind whipped our hair. It was going to be a good day. I remember the

feeling as we turned the corner and saw the reservoir. It was the lowest it had been all season. I

could see beaches around the entire reservoir that I had never seen before. My entire life I had

spent summers here, and suddenly, for the first time, an inch of fear crept in about the level of the

water.

“Holy cow dad,” I said, “the lake is so low. I’ve never seen it like this! Are we going to

be okay boating on it?”

“I’ve been alive a lot longer than you Maz, and I’ve never seen it this low either. We’ll be

safe boating though, don’t worry” he paused for a second then turned to my mom and said, “This

is crazy, don’t you think Hailey?”

My mom took a deep breath, turned to my dad and said, “yeah, growing up here, I’ve

seen the reservoir a lot more than all of you, and it’s never been this low. This drought is really

getting serious.”

As we approached the boat ramp, I noticed a sign. LAUNCH AT YOUR OWN RISK it

said in big bold letters. “Man, they weren’t kidding when they talked about water levels dropping

in reservoirs around the state!” My dad was just as surprised as all of us. My fear driven brain

looked at him for reassurance. So many things could go wrong in such low levels, I had a vague

memory of us talking about the reservoir being just over 60% capacity. My brain went rampant
with every possible thing that could go wrong. He gave me a look as if to tell me he knew what

he was doing and everything would be okay. My fear melted away, and my mom, brother and I

hopped out to get the boat ready.

We jumped in and quickly passed boards around, securing them in their places. We set up

the mirror for my dad, and made sure the plug was in. We double checked that we had all our life

jackets, and then headed down the boat ramp. It felt like we would never get to the bottom. We

started on the two lane, fairly narrow ramp and as we proceeded down it eventually turned to a

single lane, something I hadn’t seen here. The water was just barely covering the end of the

ramp, and I realized that this could be difficult. Luckily, with some struggle, skill, and effort, we

safely loaded the boat into the water. We all hopped on and spent an amazing day in the sun.

I remember as we left, we stopped and looked at the dam. As we looked over, we could

see the original dam and road. My grandpa had told us stories about how he remembered them

building the new dam and covering up the old one. Stories of cars that were still left on the road,

or the way they had to reconstruct everything to hold more water. Because of these stories, I can

only imagine the initial amazement of the new spill way and the waterfall it created when the

reservoir was full. It was incredible to see some of these stories come to life and added a positive

memory to the unfortunate decline of water held in East Canyon reservoir that year.