The Damnation Of A Canyon

Strong Response: The Damnation of a Canyon

In the reading The Damnation of a Canyon, the author, Edward Abbey, described his outlook on the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Throughout his reading, he emphasized many positives the Glen Canyon Dam once had. The text revealed Abbey believing the nature that Glen Canyon used to contain and how people didn't appreciate it. He used his perspectives of when he worked as a park ranger before all the changes happened. He strongly believed in nature. He felt that he supported his argument with facts and his personal opinions. If Abbey discussed his views to others, then maybe he could've understood the reason why other people enjoy the new reservoir. I feel that Abbey has the right to judge because he was there when the drastic changes happened.

Abbey's arguments were trying to convince the readers to realize that nature is important unlike the construction of the new dam. Since he used really good arguments and view points to support his case, I support his essay. He maintained giving us many examples of how the canyon used to look like. Abbey used his experiences like when he and his friend "made a float trip in little rubber rafts down through the length of Glen Canyon," or when "[he] worked as a seasonal park ranger." He was mainly targeting the general people that experienced nature life. The essay starts off with Abbey feeling "that [he was] in position to evaluate the transformation of the region caused by construction of the dam." He has an understanding of the before and after affect of the production of the dam.

Even though people might not agree with Abbey, I felt that he persuaded people with the details that he used to show us the negatives about the new reservoir. He argued how the river is gone and there are "hundreds of feet of polluted water, accumulating silt, and mounting tons of trash." When he stated this sentence, it made me cringe to think of the pollution that the new reservoir has. Abbey might not be too credible for his arguments because he mostly used personal knowledge; he also put in the defending side to the story. He provided situations for people to acknowledge like the cost, adventure that people could be experienced, and the trip that can be safe and easier "than a powerboat tour of the reservoir." I think he appeared to be trustworthy of his own words because he gave us elements of nature.

Agreeing with Abbey does have a lot of appalling outlooks. There are people that will go against his argument since his resources seem to only come from his personal experience. I will agree with Abbey because every day people are killing nature like there is no tomorrow. People are taking advantage of what nature gave us. Every where you turn, natural habitat are being disturbed just for some lousy houses. Abbey is trying to convince people to be on his side with nature. He described before the damnation that "there were springs, sometimes flowing streams, waterfalls and plunge pools." Abbey gave us an illustration how the dam looked and it was filled with "songbirds: vireos, warblers, mockingbirds, and thrushes" and "larger mammals-mule deer, coyote, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, gray fox, kit fox, skunk, badgers..." He argued nature was killed during the process of building the reservoir. This argument probably brought many people's attention to agree or disagree with him.

Abbey represented the environmentalists to help grow the anti-dam movement. If I had the chance to do the