What and where is the most powerful or fun or harrowing experience you’ve ever had with water?

Tough question because I have a few. Flipping a raft in Cataract Canyon at 50k cfs was a heart starter. Getting flipped in a ducky in the headwaters and pinned to a barb-wired fence crossing the river (illegal) was another adrenaline spike. Of course walking the dry delta was profoundly impacting. But the most powerful and harrowing...  it was surfing the Big Sur rapid near Grand Junction, CO on an ocean surf board this last summer at record runoff levels. One of those perfect July days, blue sky, hot sun, high water, good friends and a surfer's paradise:  a glassy wave that never ended - you just happened to be land locked in Colorado watching an entire river glide past. 

What property of water most fascinates you? How did your appreciation of this property affect your book? 

Its connective, fluid force enchants me. I love that creamy element of water. In doing my book, I wanted to look at the water in the river as one long ribbon that connects the West - and then highlight how it is finally cut, or yanked from its ending point in the Sea of Cortez. 

What attitude did you have about water and people that changed in the course of researching and writing your book?

Like most in the West and America, I took water for granted and held the attitude that rivers always run. Now I know they don't.  That water, while often always present around us in some areas, is so limited. In doing my book with Jon Waterman, I learned first hand what happens when we take a resource for granted and ask too much of it — it disappears. 

In writing your book, what was the greatest difficulty you encountered in conveying the feeling of what you’ve learned about water and people? 

Since our book is a visual journey down the Colorado, I found the greatest difficulty to continually find fresh perspectives while focusing on the beauty within the tragedy of such an overtaxed system. 

What is your favorite image/passage in your book?

My favorite image is the dry Colorado River delta seen from a plane. The image is looking straight down on an abandoned fishing boat and the dry drainage channels surrounding it. The pattern and shapes the drainage tendrils form is artery-like which is a powerful metaphor for rivers as whole. If Antarctica is the heart of the planet, the Amazon Basin is the lungs, I like to think of rivers as the planet's arteries connecting it all.  

What is your hope for Colorado and the World’s water future?

My hope is that a surge of awareness will help shift our abusive water paradigm in Colorado and beyond. I am optimistic we can find ways to fulfill our water needs while leaving some for the critters and biodiversity too. Of course, it might take a forced, painful thirst to fully awaken that awareness.  

What is your favorite water book by another author?

I am a fan of my co-author's book, Jon Waterman's Running Dry but I might be slightly biased since we work together. Beyond that, I have always loved John Mcphee's Encounters With The Archdruid which a part of it chronicles the historic Grand Canyon raft trip of Floyd Dominy and David Browers -- two giants of the river who stood on opposite shores ideologically.  

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