Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History

Environmental journalist Tracey debuts with a moving chronicle of the decline of salt lakes and her journey to finding queer love in a world ridden with ecological crises. Growing up in the West, Tracey became captivated by salt lakes, which predominantly form in desert regions, taking note of how “their palette of glistening blue water, white salt crusts, green wetland edges, and fuchsia and emerald microbial life turned the horizon into a painting.” Their water levels, though, are shrinking as humans divert water from rivers that feed them to irrigate crops and global warming impacts weather patterns, making evaporation work faster. The consequences are far-reaching, as drying lake beds release toxic dust over nearby communities and diverted water contributes to sea level rise. Tracey relays traveling to Utah, where she joined a rally to raise awareness for the declining Great Salt Lake, and Kyrgyzstan, where she observed the Aral Sea, which was the world’s fourth-largest lake before water was diverted from it for farming. She pairs these explorations with her experience falling in love, intertwining the details of her marriage to a woman with the reengineering of Mexico’s Lake Texcoco into a park to show how both episodes reveal the beauty and delight of relinquishing expectations and forging a new path. Vivid and tender, this is a powerful work of queer ecology. (Mar.)