
January 31, 2025
Colorado River Stories with Kevin Fedarko
Listen to the incredible and unusual journey two men took through the Grand Canyon. Learn what lessons from the Grand Canyon we can take to imagine a healthy future for our region.
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The Colorado River is at the center of our region.
This has been true for as long as people have called the West home.
The River Basin has been home to Tribal Nations since time immemorial. Today seven present states, over 30 Tribal Nations, and two countries all depend on the Colorado River.
The story of the Interior West has often been the story of the Colorado River. Recently, the seven states and the Tribal Nations that rely on the Colorado River have come to a historic moment where they can put in place management guidelines that will sustain the future of our region and our river.
As Westerners, we all have our own story with the Colorado River. Some of us are rafters, some of us are skiers, some of us are farmers, and some of us simply recognize our dependence on the most important water source in the West. What all Westerners have in common is a reliance on the Colorado River.
Over the past 6 months, WRA has been collecting stories from voices around the basin to share the diverse group of people that all depend on the Colorado River.
Today we’re sharing one of those stories with you from an author within the Basin, Kevin Fedarko.
When you become aware of how thin and ephemeral and precious that river is, the resource itself is, when you become aware of how vast and unmistakable our dependence is on it. You open a doorway through which you can walk if you wish that will open you to an appreciation and an understanding of how dangerous it is to view the allocation of that river as a zero sum game.
Kevin Fedarko is best known for his journeys through the American Southwest. He’s had a successful career as a journalist and an author covering all different kinds of adventures.
He is the author of both The Emerald Mile and A Walk in the Park. They both chronicle two different ways to experience the desert landscape around the Colorado River.
Kevin’s 2024 book A Walk In The Park tells the story of, as he calls it, a “spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon.” It is the story of a 750-mile odyssey Kevin and his friend Pete McBride undertook to navigate a traverse of the Grand Canyon. It left the two men with many lessons to inform the future of this river that is central to our region.
On today’s episode of Two Degrees out West, listen to the incredible and unusual journey two men took through the Grand Canyon and what it taught them. We will hear not just about the Colorado River but also what lessons from the Grand Canyon we can take to imagine a healthy future for our region.


Kevin Fedarko
Kevin Fedarko is a seasoned author and journalist renowned for his exploration of the American Southwest and his fervent advocacy for environmental conservation. He has been a staff writer at Time magazine, where he worked primarily on the foreign affairs desk, and a senior editor at Outside, where he covered outdoor adventure. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, and Esquire, among other publications. He and his wife, Annette Avery, owner of Bright Side Bookshop, live in Flagstaff, Arizona, where they spend as much of their free time as possible hiking in the Grand Canyon or in mountains just outside of town.
Find out more about Kevin and his work here.
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Dave: The Colorado River is at the center of our region. This has been true for as long as people have called the West home. The river basin has been home to tribal nations since time immemorial. Today, seven present day states and over 30 tribal nations and two countries all depend on the Colorado River.
[00:00:20] The interior West is a diverse region, but whether you live in the high mountains of Colorado, the farmland of California, or the striking red deserts of Arizona, you are tied to the Colorado River. The Colorado is seemingly always in the news. The story of the Interior West has often been the story of the Colorado River.
[00:00:38] Recently, the seven states and the tribal nations that rely on the Colorado River have come to a historic moment where we can put in place management guidelines that will sustain the future of our region and our river. Over the past six months, WRA has been collecting stories from voices around the basin to share the diverse group of people that all depend on the Colorado River.[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] As Westerners, we all have our own stories with the river. Some of us are rafters, and some of us are skiers, and some of us are farmers, and some of us simply recognize our dependence on the most important water source in the West. Today, We’re sharing one of those stories with you from an author within the basin, Kevin Fedarko.
[00:01:23] Welcome to Two Degrees Out West, a podcast for advocates and decision makers seeking solutions to climate change and its impacts around the West. On Two Degrees Out West, we’ll talk with climate experts and advocates to bring you the stories, experiences, and insights from their work in the places we call home.
[00:01:40] On today’s episode of Two Degrees Out West, listen to the incredible and unusual journey two men took through the Grand Canyon and what it taught them. We will hear not just about the Colorado River, but also what lessons we can learn from the Grand Canyon that we can use to imagine a healthy future for our region.
[00:01:59] Kevin [00:02:00] Fedarko is probably best known for his journalism and journeys through the American SouthWest. He’s had a very successful career as a writer and an author covering all different kinds of adventures. He’s the author of both The Emerald Mile and A Walk in the Park, two stories which ultimately chronicle two different ways to experience the desert landscapes around the Colorado River.
[00:02:20] He spoke about the latter story at this year’s Colorado River Water Users Association conference. Kevin, welcome to Two Degrees Out West.
[00:02:28] Kevin Fedarko: Thanks so much for having me. I, I’m an author, who is kind of incorrigibly obsessed with and writes primarily on the Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon National Park, a landscape that, , kind of grabbed me by the lapels, very early on in my life and has never really let go of me.
[00:02:48]
[00:02:48] Dave: I’ve been a really big fan of, of learning about your work recently, and particularly your talk at CRWUA was really compelling to me. You grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before [00:03:00] moving out West. What drew you out West into the Colorado River Basin?
[00:03:05] Kevin Fedarko: ,In some ways, I think what drew me West, was the idea that there might be a place out there, a landscape out there, which
[00:03:15] represented the opposite of what I was surrounded by, , when I was growing up as a, as a kid, you know, your listeners may or may not be aware of it. I mean, Pittsburgh is, was, is one of the great industrial cities at the United States. It was the center of, , the steel manufacturing industry. It was the center of enormous prosperity and produced incredibly important resources, but all of that was achieved at great cost to the environment, to the natural beauty of the landscape of southWestern Pennsylvania, which I think in some ways must have once been one of the most gorgeous [00:04:00] landscapes on the face of the planet, , before it was overtaken by mines and factories and mills and The kind of, , the kind of industry that ended up by the time I was a young boy growing up in the late 1960s, , a place where the, everything, the land, the water and the air itself was tainted and in some cases poisoned.
[00:04:28] , and it was impossible to sort of not notice that. I can vividly remember. You know, sitting in the back of my parents station wagon, my brother and I holding our noses as we passed by the Jones and Laughlin steel plant, , along the, along the Monongahela River, , which smelled like rotten eggs. I can remember that my father, when he took my brother and I on our first hikes, he took us behind our grandparents home through a forest of pine [00:05:00] trees and out into this A landscape that consisted of these kind of blackened hills.
[00:05:05] And at the base of each of those hills was a kind of orange colored socket of water. What he was taking us through were what were called spilly piles at the time. These were the mining tailings that were left behind by the strip mining operations that had removed the topsoil and, and replaced it. , with, with a kind of you know, toxic detritus that made it impossible for anything to grow.
[00:05:30] Those were our mountains when I was a boy. And, , I grew up feeling as if I, that my birthplace was, was a place where a kind of a crime had been committed against nature. A crime whose nature and scope and history I didn’t fully understand and wasn’t able to grasp, but , there was an idea that was planted in my mind around that time when I was around 10 or 11 years old, and my father handed me a book.
[00:05:59] A book [00:06:00] that some of your listeners may be familiar with. , a book called The Man Who Walked Through Time, written by an author named Colin Fletcher. And I was too young to really absorb the story and the writing, but what really caught me was the The image on the front cover of that book, it was a photograph that Fletcher had taken of himself in the midst of a solo backpacking journey that he embarked on in the smer of 1963 when he became the first person in recorded history.
[00:06:31] That’s an important distinction, recorded history or modern history to hike the length of what at the time was Grand Canyon National Park. It’s also important to note that during those years, Grand Canyon National Park comprised only about a third of Grand Canyon itself, but the book was the story of Fletcher’s journey and the image of him standing with this enormous backpack holding a huge walking stick in his hands with his back to the camera and gazing [00:07:00] out across this This abyss of, bare naked rock and, and far below his feet, way down at the bottom was this thin blue ribbon of water coursing through the middle of it all.
[00:07:16] It awakened in my mind, the idea, the possibility that there were places out there, places Not like Pittsburgh, very far from Western Pennsylvania, where you could stand on a ledge and you could allow your eye to travel to the furthest horizon. And at no point would your gaze be interrupted by a single smokestack or blast furnace or train loaded with coal.
[00:07:44] And the idea that those places might be out there and that there was a road that might one day lead from Pittsburgh to them was something that, , lit a fire in my mind, a fire whose spark has never really [00:08:00] extinguished even to this day. And that’s what drew me West, and drew me towards, and eventually enabled me to connect with, , this landscape that has formed the center of my work, and in many ways the center of my life as an adult.
[00:08:16] Dave: I think I’ve heard that so many times from people that like, grew up on the East Coast, and have that experience with industry or, or pollution or whatever hans have done to the landscape and realize that like out West, some of those things haven’t happened yet. And there’s an opportunity to like, to prevent some of that.
[00:08:33] Kevin Fedarko: Look, like that’s true. That’s incredibly true. And like a lot of transplants who live in the West, who live in the Intermountain West have a backstory, very much like mine. And I think maybe it’s important to sort of say that. Like, that’s not a story that can just be repeated, , ad nause over and over again.
[00:08:55] Like, it’s not a very good blueprint for us as a nation, as a [00:09:00] society, , to tell ourselves stories in which we grow up in, , landscapes that have been, , Irreparably harmed and damaged by industry and that we all go and find a better place a place that has not yet been Marred in some way and we move there and we spend the rest of our lives You know partaking of opportunities and reveling in beauty that was denied to us as young people I’d also think it’s important, you know to say that like if you go to Western pennsylvania today Some of its beauty has been restored, because there are parts of the east, particularly in my view, the northeast, where the forests have grown back, where some of the streams are healthy and clear and not, no longer poisoned by By, you know, runoffs from coal mines, and that’s because the people who lived back there have embraced a set of ethics that in some ways [00:10:00] has yet to fully migrate West.
[00:10:02] , and, and that there is a possibility for restoration and recovery, when it’s combined with an awareness of the importance of living in harmony with the natural world. , There’s a possibility that exists and it can only exist if people think of themselves as stewards and not just simply consers, , of landscape and beauty and natural wonder.
[00:10:29] So that’s like super long winded, but I, I, I don’t know. I just, it feels important to say that.
[00:10:35] Dave: That word harmony, it comes up so often in, in our work and, WRA when we think about what the solutions are, it’s very often. Making sure that we’re living in conversation with landscape and not not in conflict with it.
[00:10:49] Kevin Fedarko: Absolutely. And I mean, this is the subject of our conversation today, right? We’re going to be talking about the Colorado river. We’re going to be talking about a resource that, you know, is it’s, it’s the [00:11:00] lifeline of the American SouthWest, but it’s, it’s overtaxed, it’s overused. There’s more water on paper than there is in the river itself and a future, a sustainable future, a livable future in this part of the country only exists if, , If the people who are part of this landscape and whose lives and fortunes depend on the health of this river embrace the idea that it’s a shared resource and that, , it, it, it is something that needs not only to be used, but to be protected and preserved and stewarded, , with an eye towards the future, like those are important ideas that need to govern how we think about it.
[00:11:46] The resource itself and how we behave, , with and amongst one another as we try and find our way towards, you know, very difficult solutions, right? In a, in a warming world where there’s less and less water [00:12:00] and, and more and more people who want to make a claim on it.
[00:12:07] Dave: In 2024, Kevin published his book, A Walk in the Park. As Kevin tells it, the book is about a spectacular misadventure in the Grand Canyon. This 750 mile odyssey Kevin and his friend Pete McBride undertook can only be described as epic. According to Kevin’s adventure partner Pete McBride, at the time of their journey there were more people that had stood on the surface of the moon than had walked the full end to end traverse of the Grand Canyon.
[00:12:35] As Kevin tells us, it’s one thing to run the rapids of the river, but it’s an entirely different challenge to try to navigate the desert. Kevin explained how he and Pete had the idea for this journey. And how they ended up embarking on a trip very few people have completed.
[00:12:53] Kevin Fedarko: , it’s a rather roundabout story, but really it, it’s a story that begins, I guess, in the smer of, [00:13:00] I think it was 2003, when I found myself driving, to a place I’d never been to, a little town in the mountains of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, a town that sits in the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks, and, , I, I walked through the doorway of a boathouse.
[00:13:18] that belonged to one of the commercial river running operations that does commercial river trips in the Grand Canyon. And I found myself staring at this tiny little navy of some of the most beautiful boats I’d ever seen in my life. I didn’t know at the time I was looking at a particular type of boat.
[00:13:36] A Grand Canyon whitewater dory that was conceived and designed and built, , to kind of flourish inside the riparian paradise at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. , what I did know was that the lines of those boats, their simplicity, their austerity, the bright colors that they were painted in. The names [00:14:00] that they had been given, which were stenciled on their bowels and their sterns and which hearkened to, , Beautiful parts of the, of the, of the landscape, , in the West.
[00:14:13] That places like Cathedral in the desert, , and, , Tikaboo and Music Temple. These are all places that have been destroyed in one way or another. Some of them were, features inside of Glen Canyon that were drowned by Lake Powell. Others are rivers like the Skagit in the NorthWest that were Submerged by dams, but these boats bore these very poetic and evocative names.
[00:14:39] And so it was that combination, shape and color and the poetry of their names that just seduced me. And as I stood there, my jaw just kind of hit the floor. And I, I kind of resolved in that moment that, , even though I was a kind of like a dirtbag freelance magazine writer earning. [00:15:00] Barely enough money at the time to support myself.
[00:15:02] I was going to have to find a way to suspend my super unsuccessful career to follow those boats down into the world, the hidden world of whitewater and wooden boats at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And so that’s really a start of, of my odyssey. Inside of Grand Canyon National Park, I spent the next, the better part of the next six smers trying to become a Grand Canyon whitewater guide, a dory guide.
[00:15:33] Turned out I was so bad at rowing and reading whitewater that I was never able to progress beyond rowing the baggage boats at the, at the back of the, , the Dory expeditions that I, that I was allowed to work on. But I did get to sit around the campfire at night and listen to river guides tell stories.
[00:15:52] And, , the more I listened to those stories, the more, the more I was. I was captivated [00:16:00] by the idea that I was, I was hearing what I was convinced was really just one big grand story. , so many of the tales that River Guides trade around the campfire, have to do with this one season that, again, many of your listeners will be familiar with.
[00:16:17] People who love the Grand Canyon and love the Colorado River. It’s, it’s the spring of 1983 when a, , a massive deluge of snowmelt descended on the Colorado River and, , you know, filled up Lake Powell to the point where the surface of that reservoir was threatening to overtop the Glen Canyon Dam.
[00:16:43] It’s the smer where The engineers and the technicians and the managers of the Glen Canyon Dam in an effort to save the dam opened up every valve and penstock and river outlet tube and spillway tunnel that they had and they created a giant flood inside of the Grand Canyon and [00:17:00] it’s the story of a couple of boatmen three of them One in particular a man named Kenton Grua who had a little wooden dory named the Emerald Mile And, , the dream that formed in his mind that spring of putting the Emerald Mile onto the river illegally at midnight and together with two of his friends trying to use that flood as a hydraulic slingshot to propel them through the canyon and set what they hoped would be an unbreakable speed record for the fastest boat ever to go through the Grand Canyon.
[00:17:35] And, , that was the, that story became my first book. It was a book that came out in the smer of 2013. , it was named after the Dory. It’s called The Emerald Mile. And although it is ostensibly kind of an adventure story, , a story of a race through a beautiful place, it’s really [00:18:00] using that adventure to write a profile about, and a kind of a love letter to this This hidden world, as I said a moment ago, of whitewater and wooden boats at the bottom of the canyon, and when that book came out in the smer of 2013, I figured I was done with the canyon and it was time to, like, move on to whatever the next project was going to be.
[00:18:19] , which brings me finally to your question. You’re getting a glimpse into how long winded I can be. But, you know, , it was right at that time when I thought that I was finished with the Grand Canyon that, , My, my, my great friend, , and professional collaborator, Peter McBride, someone with whom I’ve done many, many assignments, magazine assignments all over the world, and with whom I have a A tempestuous and troubled friendship.
[00:18:48] , because we love each other deeply. We drive each other completely nuts. And so many of our assignments have been driven by, , Pete coming up with some other [00:19:00] harebrained ideas. And the two of us seeing those assignments, you know, go off the rails, like a coal train that, uh. Sort of crashes into the woods.
[00:19:09] , and it was in the smer of 2014 that Pete came to me with his latest idea, which was that, you know, although. I may have thought that the canyon, that I was done with the canyon, the canyon wasn’t done with me because the two of us were going to be, we’re going to put on backpacks and we were going to embark on a massive hike for National Geographic in which we would cut a transect on foot along the length of Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park.
[00:19:41] We would walk the entire thing. Over the course of a year, despite the fact that there’s no trail that will take you from one end to the other. And we would learn things along the way about ourselves. We would learn things along the way about the canyon and the river and the park. And we would wrap all of that [00:20:00] together into a story, , that would run in the pages of National Geographic.
[00:20:05] That would both celebrate the treasures and the gems that are hidden inside of this place. But also write about some of the threats that loom over it, many of them in the form of, development projects. And so, , Pete seduced me into joining him on this venture, for which, despite the fact that I had written an entire book and spent six years working as a river guide, despite the fact that Pete had been on many river trips himself, Neither of us was even remotely prepared to, to, to embark on.
[00:20:42] And the reason for that is that, you know, the world inside of the Grand Canyon is not one, but two worlds. There’s the world of the river, which is magical and dynamic and flowing, but it’s incredibly narrow. You know, it’s, it’s a hundred yards from one side to the other. It’s [00:21:00] 277 miles long. It’s less than 1 percent of the 2 million acres that comprise Grand Canyon National Park.
[00:21:09] And the rest of the park, the rest of the canyon, the rest of the landscape is this tableau of rocks and cliffs and ledges, , that loom high above the river itself. And that was the world that the two of us were, preparing to enter into and surrender ourselves to. And, Our experience with the river world, the 1 percent of the canyon, , qualified us in no way to enter into the world of the rock.
[00:21:44] And so, much of what befell us, from the moment that we left Lees River Ferry, consisted of just a series of disasters and spankings as we were, , as our hubris and our arrogance was stripped away, [00:22:00] much like the You know, the wind and the, and the rain strips away the soil, , on the surface of the ledges inside of the canyon and reveals what’s underneath.
[00:22:11] But, , that’s, that’s how this, that’s how this journey and this debacle really began.
[00:22:19] Dave: Kevin’s story, a story of captivation with landscape, and of curiosity, and of miles of misadventures shared between two friends, left him with many lessons. He told me about the different perspective. He and Pete came to understand as they traversed the treacherous terrain above Grand Canyon Terrain, far different than what he was familiar with as a river runner.
[00:22:41] Kevin Fedarko: It’s the sort of things that happen when you, when you, you begin to understand, in my case, for the very first time that the. The vast majority of the park and the landscape is, is, is the world of the rock, [00:23:00] not the world of the river and understand why that matters. I mean, let me just say a few words about like how men and women who are boat people think of Grand Canyon.
[00:23:13] Like if you’re a boat person, if you’re a river guide, if you’re a private boater, if you’ve some, if you’re somebody who’s been down there on a kayak or an ore raft, Or a dory, or you captain a motor rig, , you worship at the altar of the Colorado River. You are seduced by its beauty, its dynamism, its dangers, its excitement.
[00:23:42] , the long, long stretches of stillness and tranquility. , the pockets of, of. turbulence and savagery and violence, , that, that stud the length of the river [00:24:00] when you, when you move into the rapids, particularly the biggest of them all. And water, particularly water in the desert, is so seductive that you rapidly become convinced that everything else, every other aspect of that world, the cliffs, the ledges, the pageantry of light that plays across the surface of the rock, the color of the sky, the clouds, the weather that moves through the canyon.
[00:24:28] All of it is simply backdrop for the thing that matters the most, which is the river. The river is It’s like, and it makes sense. There’s a logic to it. The Colorado River is the instrent, the tool that carved and created Grand Canyon in the first place. It’s the thing that has polished the walls of the rock itself and sculpted them into these beautiful shapes.
[00:24:54] , It is, by virtue of being a ribbon of water running through the middle of the desert, it’s the [00:25:00] source of, you know, the highest and the densest level of biodiversity, the riparian corridor. It boasts up to 500 times the density of plant and animal life that you’re going to find, , you know, if you venture any more than 100 yards beyond the shores of the river itself.
[00:25:22] , it’s the thing that defines the essence of the Grand Canyon. And, , everything else Is subordinate to it for, for that reason, and that’s kind of like a philosophy, a religion, if you will, that I ascribe to, , right up until the moment when Pete and I put on our backpacks and started trying to hike through the thing.
[00:25:45] And, and then I began to understand that there’s a completely different way of looking at this world. You know, if you’re moving through Grand Canyon on foot. You are making lateral progress by [00:26:00] piecing together sections of Ledges that you hike along many of which are very thin and as you move Downstream from Lees Ferry those ledges will carry you higher and higher Up the walls of the canyon and further and further away from the river to the point where Sometimes you can’t see the river at all.
[00:26:24] And even when you can see it, it’s hundreds or thousands of feet below you. , you’re utterly dependent for survival, not on the river, but on puddles, you know, potholes, these very thin ephemeral pockets of water that collect after snow storms and rainstorms that evaporate within 48 to 72 hours, you hopscotch from one to the next, knowing that.
[00:26:49] And if you get so far out beyond the last one that you can’t get back to it and you can’t find the next one, you’re going to die, you know, 900 feet above and looking down upon the greatest [00:27:00] river in the American SouthWest, but it’s irrelevant to you, , because, because you can’t touch it. , and, and all of that brings to bear a level of hility that.
[00:27:18] It becomes rather difficult to touch when you’re on the river itself. You really begin to gain a fundamentally new sense of how small you are, how little you matter, how harsh and brutal the desert can be. And also how incredibly thin and precious and delicate The river itself is when you’re on the river when you’re in, like, about to enter a rapid like Hans or, , Horn Creek or Lava Falls.
[00:27:49] The Colorado River seems like the most powerful force on Earth. But when you’re staring down at it and can’t get to it [00:28:00] and trying to find your next pothole to camp next to it night, you begin to see the river for what it really is. This incredibly thin blue thread, , each drop of which is precious and by that thread the entire civilization of the American SouthWest hangs every city in town that we have.
[00:28:25] , every golf course, every subdivision, every municipal water system, Even the energy in the grid itself that powers our microwave ovens and, , the outlets that we plug our electric cars into. All of it derives from this one river that’s less than a hundred yards across. And you begin to view the river from the world of the rock [00:29:00] as something that needs to be nurtured and protected.
[00:29:07] in a way that becomes, that is different from how you view it when you’re inside a boat, trying to figure out how you’re going to survive lava falls. I don’t know if this really makes sense, , to anybody other than a boat person, but, but I guess what I’m answering in a long winded way, the answer to your question is, you know, what we learned is we, we were afforded the ability We underwent a fundamental change in our perspective, a perspective that was brought to us by the rocks themselves, and it enabled us to see the river in a fundamentally new way and suggested to me that that perspective is probably a perspective that each and every person who lives anywhere in [00:30:00] the SouthWest, doesn’t matter if you’re in Tucson or Phoenix or Albuquerque or, you know, Bluff, Utah, that like, that’s a perspective that we would all do well to embrace and cultivate because it encourages us to, to kind of hold somewhere in our hearts and our minds, a sense of how precious water is.
[00:30:28] Of how carefully it needs to be stewarded, and how enormous our responsibilities are as individuals who live here and are dependent upon that resource.
[00:30:40] Dave: Kevin’s adventures are a reminder that ultimately, we live in, as he called it, the world of the rock. The river is a small, delicate, but critical element of the interior West.
[00:30:51] It is easy to forget how protected we are by the Colorado River. His journey and the stark contrast between the world of the river and the world of the rock left him [00:31:00] with many lessons to inform how we might care for this resource that we rely on. This is especially true as so many people across the West are talking about what the future of the Colorado River should look like.
[00:31:10] He shared some of those insights.
[00:31:14] Kevin Fedarko: When you become aware of how thin and ephemeral and precious that river is, the resource itself is, when you become aware of how vast and unmistakable our dependence is on it. You open a doorway through which you can walk if you wish that will open you to an appreciation and an understanding of how dangerous it is to view the allocation of that river as a zero s game.
[00:31:50] that is played between users, all of whom are trying to grab as much as they can and prevent everyone [00:32:00] else from getting access to what they feel is their share. That’s one way of regarding water in the West. But it’s not a really great blueprint for the future. , what the river teaches me is the importance of recognizing that our dependence on it and our responsibilities to it, and by extension to ourselves, is not individual and zero s.
[00:32:35] It’s communal, , that we participate in a community that is both responsible for caring for and, has a right to draw from that river in order to survive. And as kind of cheesy as this may sound, or as woo woo as this may sound. Dialogue, [00:33:00] empathy, cultivating a sense of respect for other people sitting at the table, other entities sitting at the table, cities and towns, tribes, communities, organizations, .
[00:33:17] And listening more than talking, that this is a pathway to the future that I think offers a better set of prospects than hiring a bunch of lawyers and trying to figure out how many acre feet you can claim from a river that’s already allocated. So those are some of the insights and the lessons that I, I guess I was handed to, I was handed by, by our journey and our walk, in which I am now, Slowly beginning to discover have some applicability, at least in my view, to some of these larger [00:34:00] questions and more abstract questions concerning allocation and policy and conservation and, , and river law that now loom over the river and the landscape in the entire region.
[00:34:13] I
[00:34:19] Dave: asked Kevin what a healthy, vibrant future might look like for the Colorado River.
[00:34:26] Kevin Fedarko: I mean, when you asked me to sort of like sketch out my vision for the future of the Colorado River, I have to start by saying I’m not an expert on like anything. , I, I, I’m not an expert on water policy or water law or.
[00:34:43] hydrology or biology or meteorology or geology or geography or topography or any of it. I’m just a guy who like put on a backpack that weighed way too much. And, you know, spend a year bbling through, a national [00:35:00] park. One of many along the length in, in the Colorado river watershed. , and that does not.
[00:35:07] me to make, , grandiose pronouncements about how we should be thinking about or handling, , this river. But I guess I would return in some ways to what I was talking about before, , that I would hope that the future of this landscape and our tenure on this landscape as citizens. As residents, as beneficiaries, as stewards, that that future includes some of the insights that, you know, the Canyon handed to me and to Pete as we bbled through it.
[00:35:57] , I mean, I think [00:36:00] approaching complex and important policy decisions from a standpoint of hility and awareness of how small we are, how little we matter. How thin our toehold is on the planet itself, all of which stands in direct opposition to how we experience and think about and frame our, our stature, , that, that is a very important perspective to adopt, one that, you know, offers up the possibility of a more sustainable future, , than, than simply celebrating and celebrating.
[00:36:42] Thank you. An illusory sense of how much shock and awe we create as we move about our business in the world. So hility is a, is a really, and hbleness, , is, is something that the canyon gave to us in which I would hope the future of this river and this landscape, , [00:37:00] that we would embrace as a society.
[00:37:02] . Community as well. The idea that ultimately our responsibilities towards others are the only pathway through which we can secure, , we ourselves need and that those responsibilities knit us together. They bind us together into a, a tapestry of, of, , of empathy, , and duty. , that, that offers a secure way of moving into the future in a way that’s very different from how we traditionally think of these things.
[00:37:44] And the other thing that I would hope that the future holds forth, , is a cultivation of an, an awareness, of the fact that this landscape, this region, despite it’s incredible challenges, despite, , [00:38:00] The fact that it struggles with, , too little water and too much ignorance when it comes to politics and ethics that, , existing, coexisting alongside of all of that is some of the most incredible beauty, natural beauty available to us anywhere on the planet.
[00:38:22] And that there is something salutary and fulfilling. In being aware of and partaking in and seeking to preserve and to pass along natural beauty and that those are things that are just as important as figuring out how you’re going to water your lawn or how many acre feet you need, , for your next alfalfa crop, that these are things that coexist together and, it has as much a place in the future as anything that is written or contained In the body of laws that constitute the law of the river.
[00:38:59] [00:39:00] I’m
[00:39:00] Dave: really reminded of what you said earlier in the podcast. , just about that. It’s not a sustainable structure to have the places we grow up. be spoiled and constantly be looking for something new. Like this, it, we, there is nothing more new to go to. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve gone to it all. I’m so
[00:39:17] Kevin Fedarko: glad you returned to that.
[00:39:18] Cause like that’s, that’s exactly, that’s exactly right. Right. , there’s not another Intermountain West awaiting us if we treat this part of the country. the way the place that I was born was treated by the generations who preceded me. , we can’t just continue moving to other places, , and then congratulating ourselves for having made the move, and congratulating ourselves on not still being stuck in the places that we once were.
[00:39:55] That’s another way of defining home, if you want, right? Home is the place where [00:40:00] you stick. Home is the place where you belong. Home is the place where you plant your flag and with your flag the set of responsibilities and duties not just to yourself but not just to your community but to the children and the grandchildren that are going to follow you.
[00:40:15] , and the knowledge that they may not have a place to escape to like you did.
[00:40:26] Dave: The future of the Colorado River is going to depend on collaboration. The reality is that climate change, drought, and growing water demands have pushed the Colorado River to its breaking point. Despite the best efforts of public officials, short term agreements are not enough to address the changing climate and demands on the river.
[00:40:45] We all have a dependency on the Colorado River. Our long term health is dependent on this irreplaceable linchpin of the American West. If you would like to learn more about the solutions to some of the problems on the Colorado River, and stay up to date with the latest news [00:41:00] developing around the river, you can join our email list and follow us on social media.
[00:41:05] If you want to learn more about Kevin Fedarko and his books, you can find them at KevinFedarko. com, and I’ll link his website in the show notes. If you would like to find some of the Voices of the Colorado River submissions, you can check out our Instagram page to read through some of the stories other people have shared about their experiences in the basin.
[00:41:24] If you’d like to tell your own story, you can also do so at the link in our show notes. Did you like what you’ve heard? Bring others into the conversation. Share our show with friends, family, and group chats alike. Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and LinkedIn to get the latest climate news from the West and hear about upcoming episodes.
[00:41:44] You can find all of our show notes, a full transcription of this episode, and further resources to learn about the Colorado River at Westernresourceadvocates.org. Lastly, WRA would like to thank our sponsors who make this work possible. Our Impact Sponsor is First Bank. [00:42:00] Our Premier Sponsor is Vision Ridge Partners.
[00:42:03] Our Supporting Sponsors are BSW Wealth Partners, GoCo, Group14 Engineering, Jones Co., Meridian Public Affairs, and Solup.
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2 Degrees Out West is a podcast from Western Resource Advocates, a conservation organization fighting climate change and its impacts to support the environment, economy, and people of the West. WRA works across seven states to protect our climate, land, air, and water.
2 Degrees out West is a podcast for advocates and decision makers who want to fight climate change and its impacts across the West.
On 2 Degrees Out West, we talk with climate experts and advocates to bring you stories, experiences, and insights from their work in the places we call home.
It is hosted by Dave Papineau.
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