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Show "It was probably foolish and masochistic of me to have hung around and watched it happen. But I just had to. At first it would rise a foot overnight, and you saw things you loved go under. First it was Music Temple. Then it was Gregory Natural Bridge. Then Cathedral in the Desert. I’d think of those fools that said this was a good thing, that we needed this dam. Then I’d see Hidden Passage or some other lovely spot with no name go under...it was unbearable. “And I'll always remember the sign at Rainbow Bridge. There was a Park Service sign along the trail and it read: ‘God’s Work. Tread Lightly.’ The next week, the lake came up and buried the sign and the trail." By late 1964, the reservoir had reached Hite and Glen Canyon was gone...for now. Ken Sleight was never the same after the drowning of Glen Canyon. Before Lake Foul (he never calls it anything else), Ken had convinced himself that the common sense and decency of his fellow man would ultimately prevail and stop such idiotic and destructive follies as Glen Canyon Dam. He hasn't felt that way since. He became vigilant, the sentinel on guard...the first to throw himself in front of any scheme or project that threatened the red rock wilderness. In 1963, Ken moved his family to the small southern Utah community of Escalante, in Garfield County. He set up his river company there and started taking land trips to the canyons and mountains as well. Although he wasn’t much of a church-goer, his Mormon roots allowed him a certain degree of acceptance from the town. "After all, I must have been related to a third of the people who live there. The cowboys worked with me...rented me horses for my pack trips. I got along pretty well with everyone for about two years." But in 1965, the proposed Trans-Escalante Highway, a multi-million dollar road project, drove a deep and permanent wedge between Ken and the people of Escalante. The proposed paved road would have connected Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell with Page, Arizona, near the dam. The highway would have cut across the heart of the Escalante wilderness and the Waterpocket Fold-—wild and lonely country. Ken was never the same after the drowning of Glen Canyon... He became vigilant, the sentinel on guard...the first to throw himself in front of any scheme that threatened the red rock wilderness. Sleight was adamantly against the road from the get-go, and the town showed its ugliest side to him. He was threatened by anonymous callers and sometimes not so anonymous callers. He once found his old truck pushed off the road and into a ditch. The strain began to show on his family. By 1966, Ken’s wife had endured enough and convinced Ken to pack up and move back to Bountiful. So the Sleights returned to suburbia and Ken supplemented the family income teaching school in the winter. But as hostile as Escalante may have been, living in urban Utah was unbearable for Ken. He couldn’t "handle the sameness of it all...I just didn’t fit in." And so in 1969, Ken left Bountiful and re-located to Green River, Utah and opened a bookstore in the old bank building. It also marked the end of his 14 year marriage. Many of the friendships that would carry him to this day were solidified during those Green River days. Moki Mac Ellingson was there, working at Green River State Park, the Quists were often in Green River. He met and befriended Joe and Pearl Baker. It was a re- appearance, both physical and metaphysical, to Abbey’s good friend. Sleight never asked Ed, and Abbey never confirmed it. But ask anybody who Seldom Seen Smith in The Monkey Wrench Gang is, and they’ll point to Ken Sleight. Ken pleads the fifth. In the late 1970s, Ken met Jane Hunter on a trip down the Grand. "She seduced mel. She moved to Green River with her horses, and later we decided to throw together and make the move to Moab." In 1983, Ken and Jane were married. Together they took one of the greatest gambles of their lives; in 1985 the Sleights became the owners of the spectacular Pack Creek Ranch, nestled in the foothills of the La Sal Mountains. It was touch-and-go for years. The financing was tricky and difficult and neither of them could be sure that the ranch would pay for itself. But 15 years later and the Sleights are still there and Pack Creek Ranch is known around the West for its quiet and peaceful beauty. And from one of the little cabins that lie adjacent to the horse barns, Sleight continues to wage war on those fools who would foul and despoil his canyon country. He does battle on the phone and on his computer. And face-to-face. He’s in Monticello one day giving Bill » Redd and the rest of the San Juan county commissioners fits over nuclear waste and he’s in Salt Lake City the next day, plotting strategy on Lake Foul. He’s been a regular contributor to this publication since it first went to press in 1989. But sometimes written appeals and appearances before politicians just can’t take the place of direct action. In 1991, the BLM was chaining several hundred acres of pinion/juniper forest on Amassa Back mesa with huge D-9 Caterpillars, not far from the ranch. All of Ken’s appeals to reason had fallen on bureaucratic deaf ears, and finally Sleight chose the road of last resort. Ken saddled his horse Knothead, rode to the top of the mesa and attacked the bulldozers. He and his horse pulled up just short of the blade and for a few precious moments, stood the big machinery down. The event got full coverage on the Salt Lake television stations and the publicity it generated led eventually to a moratorium on chaining. Now what? What fires up Ken Sleight in 1999? For the last decade he has been a highprofile champion of Native American rights in San Juan County, although the whites haven’t been too enthusiastic about Sleight’s protestations on behalf of the Navajos. "Why doesn’t Sleight keep his nose out of here?" grumble the good old boys at the local cafe. "Why is he riling up the Indians all the time?” But if you listen closely, it’s the white guys that are "riled up.” And it’s Ken that has them riled---sometimes the truth hits too close to home in San Juan County. Recently the movement of nuclear waste to the uranium mill south of Blanding has been a particular sore point with Ken. "It’s an atrocity. They've done no studies to ascertain liability or the danger that the waste poses. It’s a travesty. We ask for more information and all we get back is lies and more lies." He stands foursquare behind the Utah Wilderness Coalition’s proposal and hopes that "more enlightened minds" will make it a reality. But number one on his list never changes: the removal of Glen Canyon Dam. "It’s an optimistic view, but Id like to see it happen in my lifetime. Maybe that won't happen, but it will come down. One day the decision will be made and the guys with the jackhammers will go to work." And sometimes...sometimes Ken wishes he could just let go. Let somebody else fight the good fight. He thinks it might be nice to just sit back and write his book and let the world go hang..."But then here comes another issue. There’s always another issue. Those issues always catch up with me. And you have to remember that one voice can make a difference. kindling of the family that had taken root in Glen Canyon more than a decade before. They were good times. But there was another friendship born two years earlier, a couple hundred miles downstream at Lee's Ferry. Sleight was rigging his boats for a trip down the Grand. Ken’s swamper noticed a man in uniform approaching the boat and she whispered to Ken, Your voice is heard and then joined by other voices. And pretty soon you have a chorus of voices." ",.ranger’s coming.” The ranger extended his hand and introduced himself. "I’m Ed Abbey. Sleight. I roll over and check the clock...4:16 am. I think to myself, He’s late...Ken should have Do you need some help?" Ed and Ken spent the day together, loading the boats, and most of the night drinking beer and speculating how to get rid of that dam. It was a friendship that would last more than 20 years, to the day of Ed’s death in 1989. A few years after their first meeting, Abbey brought Ken the manuscript of a book that was about to go to press. One of the characters, the longtime river runner with an attitude about Glen Canyon Dam, bore an uncanny BOOK CLIFFS I’m sleeping soundly in the pre-dawn hours when I turn in my bed and hear the outside porch door creep open. Then footsteps on the concrete just outside my window. It’s been here sixteen minutes ago. But as I hear his retreating footsteps and the door close behind him I know I can sleep assured: With Seldom Seen on the warpath at 4:16 in the morning, Glen Canyon Dam doesn’t stand a chance. oooo HOMESTEADS Thompson Utah Springs |