Around the Counter with Molly & Great Salt Lake

I'm Dakota Jones.

I'm here in Salt Lake City, and I'm getting ready to start my Where the Water Was project.

This is a 260 mile run around the Great Salt Lake.

The Great Salt Lake has been drying up for years, and it's a tremendous health and environmental hazard for millions of people and animals living in this area.

And there are a ton of solutions that we can take action on right away, but the state legislature and all the citizens of Utah are not taking action fast enough.

So what this project aims to do is raise awareness for the problem, as well as all these solutions that are really effective, something we can implement right away and which will allow us to maintain our livelihoods and our cultural identity here in Northern Utah.

So I'm going to run 260 miles around the lake and I'm going to raise some money for some organizations.

I'm going to get people to sign a petition holding our legislators accountable to take action to protect the lake.

And I'm going to urge people to vote in the midterm elections.

I'm here at Salt Lake to run 260 miles around the Great Salt Lake to protect it and to raise awareness, not only for the problems, but for the solutions that we can start implementing right away to protect this amazing body of water that protects people and animals here in Northern Utah.

However, after months of planning, months of training, and just a whole lot of caring a lot about this lake and this project, I probably have broken my foot.

Last week I was running a 50 mile race as part of my training for this and I just felt a sharp pain in my foot and it hasn't gone away and I've gotten an MRI and it may be a stress reaction, it may be a stress fracture, but either way I can't run 260 miles around the lake.

And this has been really frustrating and it feels like a bit of a failure at some point where I was like, I set myself up to run this whole lake and now I can't even do it.

But what we've done instead is we've reached out for help.

We've made a call to the community.

I can't run around the lake like I wanted to, but we're still gonna do this project.

So maybe other people can help us.

So what we've done is we've turned it into a relay.

We've called for help and people have shown up incredibly well.

We have commitments where people are going to join us for every leg of this project and we're gonna have people run all the way around the lake.

It's not going to be one person doing it anymore.

It's gonna be a community effort.

And in this way, I think it's going to mirror the community effort that's required to save the Great Salt Lake.

And I'm really, really excited, honestly, because it's a way that we can make this not just about me doing a hard thing.

This is about the community.

I'm Dakota Jones.

I'm here in Salt Lake City, and I'm getting ready to start my Where the Water Was project.

This is a 260 mile run around the Great Salt Lake.

The Great Salt Lake has been drying up for years, and it's a tremendous health and environmental hazard for millions of people and animals living in this area.

And there are a ton of solutions that we can take action on right away, but the state legislature and all the citizens of Utah are not taking action fast enough.

So what this project aims to do is raise awareness for the problem, as well as all these solutions that are really effective, something we can implement right away and which will allow us to maintain our livelihoods and our cultural identity here in Northern Utah.

So I'm going to run 260 miles around the lake and I'm going to raise some money for some organizations.

I'm going to get people to sign a petition holding our legislators accountable to take action to protect the lake.

And I'm going to urge people to vote in the midterm elections.

I'm here at Salt Lake to run 260 miles around the Great Salt Lake to protect it and to raise awareness, not only for the problems, but for the solutions that we can start implementing right away to protect this amazing body of water that protects people and animals here in Northern Utah.

However, after months of planning, months of training, and just a whole lot of caring a lot about this lake and this project, I probably have broken my foot.

Last week I was running a 50 mile race as part of my training for this and I just felt a sharp pain in my foot and it hasn't gone away and I've gotten an MRI and it may be a stress reaction, it may be a stress fracture, but either way I can't run 260 miles around the lake.

And this has been really frustrating and it feels like a bit of a failure at some point where I was like, I set myself up to run this whole lake and now I can't even do it.

But what we've done instead is we've reached out for help.

We've made a call to the community.

I can't run around the lake like I wanted to, but we're still gonna do this project.

So maybe other people can help us.

So what we've done is we've turned it into a relay.

We've called for help and people have shown up incredibly well.

We have commitments where people are going to join us for every leg of this project and we're gonna have people run all the way around the lake.

It's not going to be one person doing it anymore.

It's gonna be a community effort.

And in this way, I think it's going to mirror the community effort that's required to save the Great Salt Lake.

And I'm really, really excited, honestly, because it's a way that we can make this not just about me doing a hard thing.

This is about the community.