Events

An evening with Eli Nixon, author and illustrator of  BLOODTIDE- A New Holiday in Homage To Horseshoe Crabs

Join Eli for a suitcase theater holiday proposal show, a few tunes from brilliant local highschool band 'Shapes Named Soap', a chance to singalong to some crabaoke (altered lyric power ballads about crabs) and engage in low-stakes drawing prompts and Q & A (or Q and more Q!) about how we can fortify local efforts to protect Great Salt Lake as inspired by DIY homage to our ancient coastal ancestor. All ages and abilities welcome with an especially vigorous invitation to those in the LGBTQ+ community and anyone organizing for racial/climate justice.

Sunday, October 15th. From 6:00-8:00 pm in the studio behind Survivor Wellness House at 59 S 1100 E in Salt Lake City (Parking is available across the street in the diagonal parking on the west side of 1100 E, or in Holy Cross Hospital’s parking lot. Please note: the street parking directly in front of the houses requires a parking permit.)
Free, no registration required.  Everyone is welcome! This event is made possible in partnership with Utah Humanities as part of the annual Utah Humanities Book Festival.

About Eli Nixon: 
Eli Nixon builds portals and gives guided tours to places that don’t yet exist. They are a settler-descended transqueer clown, a cardboard constructionist, and a maker of drawings, puppets, pageants, parades, suitcase theaters, and low-tech public spectaculah. Eli collaborates with activists, schools, mental health and recovery centers, libraries and the more-than-human world to expand imaginative capacity and build muscles for collective liberation. They're a Rhode Islander living on Narragansett land.

Eli is a parent of a teen, an organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice-RI, and a member of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, The Public's Devised Theater Working Group, The New Georges Jam, and brotherdykes unlimited. Eli and 300 Modern Humans (ages 0.3-83) recently "finished" a 450-million-year timeline of flora and fauna (mostly out of recyclables) in 9 months of asynchronous but collaborative organism building workshops. Now Eli is basking in intertidal naturedrag, flotilla scheming and amatuer flag dancing/ engaging in the legislative season... 

About the book:
"Bloodtide gifts us a river to wander down where we can drift away from the bullshit... a holiday that rewilds us towards a life-affirming way of being in the world. And more than a holiday, Bloodtide extends us a glitch to enter that predates the trauma of all that clouds our imaginations."  - brontë velez, Creative Director, Lead to Life

"It's hard to write about Eli Nixon's book because it's a book about fumbling into embodied relation and words are just a jump-off to living. It's about what you can do in a weekend with geologic time. It's a tender score for beautifully imperfect -- and transformative -- work... in the form of a series of proposals, invitations, and field notes... There is a crinkly poetry to Bloodtide, repurposed poetry, the poetry of wild rebirth snatched from the recycling bin. Words I thought I knew cast shadows that turn them into other beings entirely. Humble is an important word in this book, and so is impossible, and so is cardboard. ..It's a box full of wild objects, and the wild space between them. It's might-y -- might like "could be" not like brute force. It expands, has expanded me. I gasped a few times and my nose twitches with the smell -- the "rutty musk of the freer beasts within us." It is radical, it is wise, it is alive."  -Agnes Borinsky, writer & theater-maker, author of Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8 and Sasha Masha

We're preparing to keep daily vigil for Great Salt Lake during the 2024 legislative session. This Sunday, December 17th, at noon we will meet on the southeast corner of the Utah State Capitol grounds (by the big carved rock) for a one hour rehearsal of walking with the waves around the Capitol.

We need your help to carry the giant waves, fly the flocks of red-winged blackbirds and gulls, and to enliven 20 human-sized brine shrimp!

We'll be filming and photographing to help promote the 2024 GSL vigil.

Everyone is invited! Share this invitation with your friends and fam! Fun for all ages. Our path is ADA accessible.
Dress warmly as we will be outside.

Here are more details for the 2024 vigil and the link to schedule your presence with the lake during the upcoming legislative session.

Guided by Lara Chho and Joan Entwistle
This walk is part of Walking the Watershed, a series of guided walks along the waterways of the Great Basin bioregion supported by Utah Humanities.
Limited 12 participants. All ages welcome.
Free with registration. State park entrance fee of $15 applies.
We will meet at the Lake Loop Trailhead.
Wear layers, mittens, and hat. Bring water & snacks and binoculars if you have them.
We will finish at the same location around Noon. Dogs on leash are permitted.

Sunday, January 21st at 1 pm
Forest Bathing Walk at Bountiful Pond guided by Anna Lindquist
This walk is part of Walking the Watershed, a series of guided walks along the waterways of the Great Basin bioregion supported by Utah Humanities.
Limited 12 participants. Ages 12+
Free with registration.

We will connect with the watershed through our senses on this slow wander.
Wear layers, mittens, and a hat. Bring water & snacks along with anything else you need to feel comfortable outside, including a chair, blanket, or sit pad for sitting.We will finish around 3 pm. More details will be sent via email prior to the walk.

Sunday, February 4th  7:00- 7:30 am MST
Everyone is invited! Free with registration.

Scott will guide us in a meditation called Yoga Nidra which uses deep relaxation and layered awareness to help us break down barriers of subject and object. Through this experience, we can learn how to be with Great Salt Lake in a more expansive and inclusive way. 

Scott Moore is a senior teacher of yoga and mindfulness teaching classes, trainings, and retreats, in the US, Europe, and Asia whose teaching is infused with storytelling, myth, humor, to make the subject come alive and connect to the heart. He is the author of two books, Practical Yoga Nidra: A 10-Step Method to Reduce Stress, Improve Sleep, and Restore Your Spirit and 5-Minute Manifesting Journal: Focus Your Mind, Raise Your Vibration, and Turn Your Dreams Into Reality. Scott loves traveling, hanging with his family, playing and listening to jazz.

Saturday, 2/24
Nobletts Trail, Uinta National Forest, Woodland UT
Guided by Lara Chho & Joan Entwistle
Limited 16 participants.
All ages welcome.
Free with registration. 

** All participants must provide their own snowshoes. Please contact  if you have any questions or need suggestions for where to rent snowshoes. Poles recommended.

Wear layers, mittens, and hat. Bring water & snacks and binoculars if you have them.We will finish at the same location around Noon. Dogs on leash are permitted. More details will be provided via email prior to the walk.

This walk is part of Walking the Watershed, a series of guided walks along the waterways of the Great Basin bioregion supported by Utah Humanities. Through these mindful meanders, we seek to cultivate a deeper sense of place- both as individuals and in community- within the larger frame of the watershed.

Darren Parry, former Chairman of the Northwest Band and the Shoshone Nation, and lake-facing poet Nan Seymour will guide a friendly practice of finding, cultivating, and sharing our stories of kinship with the beyond human world.

Have you have ever fallen in love with a river, befriended a tree, or felt a kinship with a wild animal or bird? All forms of life have a spirit. Even the rocks are singing. We’ll spend some time together remembering what we came into this world knowing. We'll employ generative writing practice (River Writing) to help us find our stories. With support from our community agreements, we'll practice listening to each other in gratitude, without critique or praise.

Sunday, March 10th, 1:00-4:00pm
Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center media room. (State park fee of $15 applies)
Limited to 16 participants. (Age 16+)
No expertise required, just a little courage. Everyone has stories to tell! Come curious.
Tuition $40 with sliding scale available. All tuition will be donated to the restoration project at Boa Ogai. 

Darren is also the author of The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. Highly recommended reading for those interested in regional history and the power storytelling overall.

Thank you to Utah Humanities for supporting this workshop in collaboration with River Writing as part of the Witnessing the Watershed series.

Guided by Lara Chho
This walk is part of Walking the Watershed, a series of guided walks along the waterways of the Great Basin bioregion supported by Utah Humanities.
Limited 12 participants. All ages welcome.
Free with registration. State park entrance fee of $15 applies.
We will meet at 11 pm at the Lake Loop Trailhead.
Wear layers, mittens, and hat. Bring water & snacks and binoculars if you have them.
We will finish at the same location around 1 pm. Dogs on leash are permitted.

Saturday, March 16th.
Bus leaves North Temple Trax station (SLC) at 12:30 and returns by 5:30 pm
Antelope Island State Park fee is covered by your $2. Poetry reading free with this registration
There will be singing and snacks on the bus. Dress warmly for the outside poetry reading.

Songs from Along the Watershed is the third annual reading of irreplaceable, a collective praise poem devoted to Great Salt Lake. The poem is a prayer for the full restoration of the lake and an homage to all the species she sustains. The work is ever-swelling and contains over 400 voices.

This year, poets from Bear River, the Weber River, and the Jordan River will join their voices to create a chorus of songs from along the watershed. Youth poets will bring their particular witness to the thousands of pelicans recently exiled from Gunnison Island. Our reading will also feature special guest, Lisa Bickmore, Utah's current Poet Laureate.

Every word we read and sing will be presented directly to Great Salt Lake as an offering of love and devotion for our imperiled sacred lake.

Saturday, March 16th, 2-4pm.
Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center Outdoor Amphitheater
Everyone is welcome! ASL Interpretation will be provided by Drake Heap and Heather Beck.
Event is free with registration.
Register here for a $2 ride from SLC (includes park entry) on a chartered bus departing at 12:30 pm from the North Temple Trax Station.
If you come in your own vehicle, state park fee ($15 per vehicle) for access to Antelope Island will still apply. Please plan for extra travel time. Dress warmly for outside! Bring a blanket to warm up the cold bench.

Join us for the third annual reading of irreplaceable, a collective praise poem devoted to Great Salt Lake. The poem is a prayer for the full restoration of the lake and an homage to all the species she sustains. The work is ever-swelling and contains over 400 voices.

This year, poets from Bear River, the Weber River, and the Jordan River will join their voices to create a chorus of songs from along the watershed. Youth poets will bring their particular witness to the thousands of pelicans recently exiled from Gunnison Island. Our reading will also feature special guest, Lisa Bickmore, Utah's current Poet Laureate.

Every word we read and sing will be presented directly to Great Salt Lake as an offering of love and devotion for our imperiled sacred lake.