All My Rivers Are Gone: A Journey of Discovery Through Glen Canyon

by Katie Lee

"Katie Lee’s "All My Rivers Are Gone" is a unique book. It is a journal filled with strong emotions about a wondrous place on the American landscape. Her entries tell the sad saga of the decision to flood Glen Canyon on the Colorado River. Her words and songs make the canyon come alive and they provide a vivid picture of what has been lost.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, History, Environment, Travel, Southern, Outdoors

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Katie Lee (born October 23, 1919 in Tucson, Arizona, United States) is an Arizona folk singer, writer, actress, photographer and environmental activist.

She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. After that, she went on to study with two of the most successful folksingers of the 1940s, Burl Ives and Josh White.

After joining a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon she became a regular on river trips on the Colorado River and joined the opposition to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. In September and October 1955 she, Tad Nichols, and Frank Wright traveled through and documented parts of the Glen Canyon that later were to be submerged.


Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Windy]

I'm so, so mad that I didn't have a copy with me when I was at Katie Lee's signing table. When I'm 90, I hope I'm as ornery and cool as she is. Remember, boys and girls... dance naked in the desert for good health!

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and infuriating. I can't imagine knowing such a spectacular place so intimately and then dealing with the subsequent grief from its reckless destruction. While the news of "Lake" Powell gradually drying to death brings me some fleeting satisfaction, I still could never bring myself to make the relatively short trip there even to see some of Glen Canyon's resurfaced wonders, since I know the place is forever tarnished with heaps of rusted garbage and perpetually teeming with the same sort of people who decided to dam it in the first place: useless inconsiderate imbeciles. Man... fuck that wretched dam and disgusting reservoir, I hope someday soon they join everyone who was involved in their creation, forgotten and rotting in hell. Maybe I'm being harsh, but go ahead and read this book and try not to feel the same way.

[Clint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, enthralling, gut wrenching, highly entertaining. So many good things to say about this book, but ultimately it's the picture painted of a place and time that you'll never have the opportunity to experience that makes this book so devastatingly good. Katie's description of her time spent in Glen Canyon with best friends makes you realize very clearly how much pleasure you should take from your own "secret places" when/while you can.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glen Canyon Betrayed by Katie Lee.
This is an impassioned tale of Glen Canyon, now buried by the waters of Lake Powell. It is part autobiography, part river journal, part reflection on what was and how to return Glen to its former glory. This book wonderfully captures the spirit of the River as it wound its way through Glen Canyon and how we all need wilderness.

This was a re-published and updated version of All My Rivers Are Gone with a new afterword by Lee.

From the new Afterword, on the sustaining power of the wild places:

"Now, we are nearly a quarter-century past that time, with more than twenty-five times that many rivers and secret places gone. Yet, let me urge you (no matter the odds) to seek out such a place. Why? Because you need it, whether you know it or not. If and when you find it, tell on one else where it is. Keep it as long as possible and, like a loved one, cherish it, being aware that love is also pain, discovery, joy unrealized and - sooner or later - loss."

My only complaint that this new printing for 2018 is poorly bound. This brand new book was falling apart as I read it.

[David Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost sobbed as I read the chapter "At the Bedside of the River God," during which author Lee recounts her few visits to Lake Powell after Glen Canyon Dam inundated Glen Canyon. After 200 pages of heartfelt descriptions of the unutterable beauty of the original canyon, Lee's heartbreak is palpable. This is a moving memoir by someone who absolutely loved Glen Canyon, but it's not perfect. I probably would have considered Lee a little bit "flaky" if I'd known her. Also, there's a mysterious situation with a son in the shadowy background that's just casually mentioned twice but never explained in any detail. Nevertheless, the prose is sensuous and sexy, evocative and beautiful. Her descriptions of the sandstone tributary canyons--of which there are many--might get tedious and overwrought, but they don't; they remain fresh and exciting. I'd give the book 4.5 stars if GoodReads allowed.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose you have to love rivers, their mystery, their symbolism, their special niche in the Circle Of Life, to really get into this book. Katie Lee had that love. The book haunts with its plain-spoken pain for the river that disappeared. Katie had no bitterness for a lost youth, even though she was writing of her youth 40 years later. She had a consuming bitterness for the broken memory of a place that was taken from her -- from all of us -- by greed and foolishness. And she wrote of her premonition that Mother Nature will laugh at the weak hand of man and tear that dam down one day, returning the river to her.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, wonderful book. Katie Lee's heartfelt descriptions of the canyon and all it means to her brought me to tears, as I feel the same way about the rivers and deserts of the Southwest where I used to live. My only warning is that she uses some... outdated, not PC language, probably what you'd expect from a white woman in the 50s.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katie Lee's voice on the Glen canyon damn is important and provides insight you won't get elsewhere. The journal entries make me want to spend months in GSENM and long for the day Glen canyon is free again.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some true and lovely descriptions of the smell of the water, the beauty and isolation of the river. It was worth reading just for this. It also included some name dropping which I found annoying. And rambled a bit. It seemed to need some trimming.

[Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katie Lee gives such a beautiful and touching account of her time in Glen Canyon. She has a way of writing that makes you feel what she felt and be able to understand what she went through. She tells the stories of a place we no longer have a in a beautiful and heart wrenching way.

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t have the words to describe how heart wrenching this book is. I’ve known my own canyon... but never Glen, and how Katie makes me yearn to see it. It hurts me to know the fate of that paradise.

[Laurelle Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on the wonders of Glen Canyon BEFORE it became a lake. Katie describes very well, her spiritual connection with the river, canyon and her river rat companions. Anyone who is an outdoor buff would enjoy this read. Preferably on a river float.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Katie Lee's best. Heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. A true devotional to a river and a canyon.

[Sylvia Lijewski]

I don’t know how to rate this book. I loved reading about Glen Canyon and I love Katie’s story. But I had a really hard time getting through it.

[Cedar Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful firsthand telling of what was lost to the ineptly named Lake Powell.

[Bevyn Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing beautifully written book. Katie Lee brings the canyon to life and magnifies the loss we are enduring.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katie Lee writes of an intimacy with Glen Canyon that few have ever experienced. I loved this book. She writes as a free spirit in a free place. It was a joy to experience this almost forgotten place through her eyes, cry over what was lost, and come away believing that in the end the tireless river will surely run free again.

[David Holtzclaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written story of the demise of Glen Canyon,as told by explorer, songstress, actress,river rat,& humorist...Katie Lee! I've been to Lake Powell, & had no idea what lay below. I now have a deeper respect for the River Gods & Ms. Lee!

[Geoff Settles · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Edward Abby's discriptive writing of the southwest, Katie Lee shares her passion for Glen Canyon, now under Lake Foul that rivals Abby . A wonderful women and book.

[Kalsoum · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me so sad it's impossible to hike/float Glen Canyon anymore.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sensuous and heartbreaking book by a woman who realized she would be one of the last - and one of the very few - to ever see this lovely place before it was drowned. Beautifully written.