wo or three years ago somebody on his second beer at a GCRG board meeting had the bright idea that another PERSPECTIVES issue would be cool. Something like that first one Brad Dimock and Tom Moody had thought of for the Glen Canyon Dam Environmental Impact Statement, where everybody who wanted to got to have their say.

   Do that again, the thinking went, but this time on the upcoming review of the Colorado River Management Plan.

   Do another publication where one could get- straight from the horses’ mouths -a quick and dirty glimpse of a sprawling, dynamic situation.

   It’d be great. The secret goal in this case (in addition to presenting the spread of viewpoints themselves) would be to spark a moment or two of individual introspection followed by deep, heartfelt gratitude for being alive and getting to experience the Grand Canyon, the River, and the river community. With a little luck people might even glimpse their own mortality, which would in turn possibly trigger a welling up of personal thanks, responsibility, and generosity of spirit, then all those good things would miraculously converge for a few brief nanoseconds in a way that helped move everybody, collectively, a small step or two forward... toward a management plan that continues to work, and a Park that continues to do justice to the place it’s named for, in the face of the ever-increasing pressure brought to bear by the waning days of the 20th century.

   No problem. After the third beer, the whole plan sounded even better. Just hang an empty frame and let each reader call up a picture of the Grand Canyon, what it’s given them personally, and what they want to help pass on to untold generations yet to come.

   The first minor flaw, it turned out, was that the visionary (me) who said he’d deal with this publication kept getting sidetracked by the rat race and an inconvenient, but nonetheless incessant stream of bills (generated by other visions altogether).

   The real killer, though, was that the waning days of the 20th century have turned out to be pretty darned good at pressuring the things most of us love best about Grand Canyon. The issues are complex and divisive; and as you’ll see if you keep reading, the clear-cut solutions have not lept forth in glorious bursts of light.

   The saving grace, theoretically, will be the community itself. We’ll never all see eye to eye. But we do all care. We do have integrity, talent, intelligence, and the ability to every now and then rise to an occasion. Our common bond- the Grand Canyon -ultimately speaks for us all, and in the end it might just carry us through... probably not to perfection, but at least another small step or two in a good direction. The tricky part will be having patience, keeping an open mind, and mostly, finding and respecting the best in each other. Expecting that instead of the worst might be the hardest part (it’ll take sacrifices on the part of everybody) but it's an approach worthy of the canyon, and it'll definitely take us further, faster, than any other way. In that spirit, we offer this document.

Lew Steiger