Often wearing only tennis shoes, Katie Lee, the goddess of Glen Canyon, personally explored all 96 side canyons before rising flood waters covered them. She told me, "Every single canyon had a different personality. That first year I was so amazed by the forms." Katie explains, "We never carried water on our hikes thru Glen. The streams ran cool and clear." Over time her amazement and wonder became acute anger as the mysteries of Glen Canyon disappeared under Lake Powell. She's never forgiven the Bureau of Reclamation, which she calls the Wreck the Nation Bureau.

Terry Tempest Williams notes, "Katie Lee is a joyful raconteur, a woman with grit, grace and humor. She is not afraid to laugh and tease, cajole and flirt, cuss, rant, howl, sing and cry. Katie Lee is the desert's lover. Her voice is a torch in the wilderness." Lee's first book Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle documented cowboy songs of the West. Her second book, culled from her journals, is an elegy to Glen Canyon titled All My Rivers Are Gone now reprinted with more photos and additions as Glen Canyon Betrayed. She's also written Sandstone Seduction: Rivers and Lovers, Canyons and Friends where she remembers, "I think back on the time when each canyon devoured me, pulling me ahead of the others to clamber over obstacles that would reveal whatever the next bend held in secret. . . . I've called the business of mastering slickrock hiking 'getting in touch with the stone': paying attention to balance and pressure, reading and navigating the land like a boatman does rivers."

The Cline Library exhibit chronicles Lee's amazing life. Karen Underhill, Head of Special Collections and Archives, explains that Katie Lee is "a living treasure on the Colorado Plateau. We did this exhibit so we can enjoy her now." Indeed, at 89 her music, books, DVDs, and CDs have never been more popular, and a lifetime of singing, protesting, and demanding a sustainable Southwest has garnered Lee impressive awards.

Sitting on her back porch, looking out at Jerome's vast copper pits, she says, "I've written hundreds of letters. I've done the best I could. I had a talent and I used it. If I've changed anybody's attitude, I've done my part." In her kitchen a plaque states, "Old guitarists never die, they just lose their pluck," and above her front door step, weathering in the Arizona sun, are the letters SING. Katie Lee's colorful living room contains wooden snowflakes, sculpted lizards and snakes, brightly lit stained glass, first edition books on the Southwest, and guides to plants and birds. Her garden produces 100 tomatoes yearly.

If her soul is still in Glen Canyon, the documentation of it is down in the basement on shelves lined with books, CDs, old posters, backpacks, suitcases, and photographic slides in their original boxes stored in leather cases. Her archives, her stories, and her hundreds of photos will go to the Cline Library. The eventual sale of her house will create a small endowment for the Katie Lee Collection. Future generations of scholars and students will be moved by her life to make the Southwest a better place, more in balance with our desert environment.

Katie Lee inspires. Young women who've spoken with her and heard her play guitar write, "Thank you for doing what you do and being the wild spirit that you are." And Katie's advice to all of us? "Get out and walk. Don't get a guide book. Find out where the quiet places are and explore." That's sound advice that has kept her in perpetual motion for almost 90 years. Keep it up, Katie. We need your wit and wisdom.

Andrew Gulliford is a professor of Southwest Studies and history at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu