Halfway to Spring | Choosing the Long Game
On ecological crisis, national shutdown, and choosing the long game
This winter in Salt Lake City has felt disorienting. I grew up with snow days, snowball fights, and powder that blanketed neighborhoods. This year, my yard hasn’t seen a flake. Salt Lake City has logged only 0.1″ of snow so far, the lowest snowfall on record for the season, and mountain snowpack remains far below average across much of the state.
Utah is undergoing aridification—our bioregion is drying as temperatures rise, precipitation patterns shift, and water systems get pushed beyond what they can give. This year’s record-high temperatures—Utah’s warmest year on record—mean more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow, leaving our watershed well below where it should be and contributing to the decline of Great Salt Lake, which relies on snowmelt to sustain its delicate ecosystem. The Great Salt Lake is drying up fast, leaving behind a toxic lakebed on its way to becoming one of the largest dust emission sources in North America. Ecosystem collapse at Great Salt Lake is preventable, but it will take sustained political action.
Five years ago, in response to this threat, I helped co-found Save Our Great Salt Lake—a nonprofit coalition advancing public awareness, community engagement, and political accountability to ensure the lake’s recovery and long-term ecological resilience. Our work focuses on deepening collective kinship, reciprocity, and responsibility toward the lake. We also join a growing movement advocating for legal rights for ecosystems and watersheds. We collaborate with a broad coalition of local environmental organizations, each bringing specialized knowledge to push for systemic transformation. Together we’ll be back at the Utah State Capitol for our 5th annual Rally to Save Our Great Salt Lake this Saturday, 1/31. If you’re local, please join us!
While the climate shifts our landscapes, families across the country face a different kind of destabilization. Federal immigration enforcement has expanded nationwide—raids, detentions, and surveillance efforts bring state violence into neighborhoods and upend daily life for immigrant and refugee communities. Many are now too afraid to leave their homes for work, school, food, and basic necessities. In response, neighbors, churches, and mutual-aid groups coordinate support and deliver essentials directly to doorsteps. Others show up to bear witness and resist—acts of care in the face of state violence.
The International Institute of Minnesota is currently organizing a temporary food assistance program to provide refugee and immigrant families with home-delivered grocery essentials. We're donating 10% of CRUDE's revenue today to support their work and invite you to join us in making a direct monetary contribution to help these families facing uncertainty.
We're also joining the National Shutdown on Friday, January 30th—a nationwide day of economic resistance and collective action in response to the administration's attacks on immigrant communities, civil rights, and democratic institutions. Our website checkout will be disabled on Friday, and we're giving our employees a paid holiday to spend the day however feels most aligned with their values. Economic solidarity is powerful—when we withhold our labor and spending together, we create pressure that can't be ignored. Join us.
These crises may differ, but the pattern holds: when systems break down, people step up.
February 1 marks Imbolc, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Light is returning, but winter still holds strong. This is the time of preparation and commitment—the season of choosing what we’ll tend with our time, our resources, and our attention. I’m thinking about longterm plans and sustained stewardship. Saving the lake, changing the skincare industry, building the world we want—big dreams require pacing. The work isn’t instant, it’s cumulative. It’s policy advocacy, cultural shifts, coalition building, community care, nervous system regulation, reconnection to nature and Indigenous wisdom. It’s many small actions compounding over time. Imbolc invites us to choose what we'll tend this year, knowing some seeds take years to bloom. I’m choosing the long game.
Thanks for reading and thanks for living CRUDE. If gentle, microbiome-supportive care is on your horizon this spring, please take $5 off your next CRUDE purchase with code LONGGAME. Valid through the spring equinox. I’ll touch base then with my next batch of seasonal musings.
Yours in skinimalism,
Denise
Great Salt Lake photo by Chandler Rosenberg