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The Water: Where does it all go?
The previous post here ended with the observation, from the 2020 Western Water Assessment Colorado River science study, that around 170 million acre-feet of water fall on the Colorado River Basin – but only 14-17 million acre-feet end up in the actual river. Where does the other 90 percent go? And a corollary question: for…
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Where does our water come from? And what are we doing to it in the Anthropocene?
For anyone seeing our planet for the first time from a satellite’s perspective, worries about water might be the last thing to cross their mind. Had we first seen the planet that way; we would probably have named it ‘Water’ rather than ‘Earth.’ Looking at its clouds and ice sheets as well as its expanses…
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A Quick Natural History of the Colorado River
In the last posting, I discussed the great volume of written and visual material that has emerged in recent decades about the Colorado River – First River of the Anthropocene – almost all of it increasingly critical of what we have done with and to the river. It is certainly true that a lot of…
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The Colorado – First River of the Anthropocene
I said in the first post here that I’ll be focusing on ‘learning to live with the Anthropocene’ – a work-in-progress for everyone who will even acknowledge the existence of the Anthropocene. To refresh your mind on it – the Anthropocene is a new epoch in the evolution of the planet in which the human…
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Sibley’s Rivers? What, Why and – Why Not?
The first thing I want to say about ‘Sibley’s Rivers’ is to not be misled by the name; it’s not going to be all about rivers – although because the West will be the locus of focus, the rivers that run through it (or don’t) will be frequent topics. Especially the Colorado River, which is…
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The Day of the Thousand Thousand-foot Waterfalls
By George Sibley Photo credit: Mark Stemm It was a miserable morning in a transcendent landscape. We huddled in the rafts under a steady businesslike rain, learning about all the leaks in our waterproof gear, while looking out and up to waterfall after waterfall, waterfalls coming freefall in 500 or 1,000 foot leaps over the great limestone walls in…
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Down on the Ground with Sense of Place – at 50 Years
‘Sense of place’ is a term that gets used a lot today, but like all terms that get used a lot, its meaning gets as spread out, shallowed and lost in its own debris as a snowmelt stream in October. Wallace Stegner might be credited with formalizing ‘sense of place’ as a concept; he discussed…
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Down on the Ground Among Aspens
Down on the Ground Among Aspens A lot of ‘Indian Summer,’ when you just have to be outside, gets invested in the woodpile. Most of what passes for my adult life, I’ve burned quite a bit of wood, using it for anywhere from 20 to 100 percent of the heat in the motley of…
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Down on the Ground with the Garden
Published in Colorado Central Magazine August 2020 Down on the Ground with the Garden May and June are dominated here by the garden. “Gardens,” I should say; when we moved into our Gunnison home 20-some years ago, we were unimpressed with the expanse of bad lawn that came with it, and we resolved to annually…
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Down on the Ground Hiking with Hobbes
This was written in the summer of 2019 on what turned out to be my last hike with this good friend for many years; he has since, as mountain people are wont to put it, ‘gone on up the mountain.’ Down on the Ground Hiking with Hobbes Sumer is icumen in Loude sing…
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Friends to Cross Passes With
First published as part of the second edition of Dragons in Paradise, in 2014. Friends to Cross Passes With It was getting dark, and snowing harder, and I was wondering if they were actually crazy enough to have come out on this fool’s adventure. Was I going to get to the cabin and find…
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Grendel en route from Poverty Gulch to Mendicant Ridge
Presented in April 2016 at the Gunnison Arts Center, as the opening for a writer’s workshop. Thanks, David – and thanks for the invitation to be here tonight. Greetings to all of you, and welcome to Western. It has been wonderful to watch David and Mark Todd and other Western faculty bring “Writing the Rockies”…
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Partnering with a Border Collie
Partnering with a Border Collie by George Sibley Barring strange accidents or chance, I’ve partnered with my last dog – mostly because my last dog was such a superior partner. She was a border collie, Zoe; and Zoe was actually the only dog I’ve ever really been invited to partner with, however unworthy I…