{"id":21412,"date":"2019-11-06T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T18:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=21412"},"modified":"2019-12-06T13:57:39","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T21:57:39","slug":"gentlemen-in-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2019\/11\/06\/gentlemen-in-the-wilderness\/","title":{"rendered":"Gentlemen in the Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wake up to the southern Colorado sun earlier than the rest of my boating crew and go for a walk. I\u2019ve just finished another diversity, equality and inclusion training for work and this subject and how it relates to the outdoors has overtaken my thoughts. As an outdoors(wo)man, I’m well-acquainted with the inequalities of how women experience the outdoors in comparison to men. As I walk along this desert dirt road, I\u2019m keeping my eyes out for not only rattlers and cougars but also men lurking in the bushes. It\u2019s not a conscious choice but an involuntary response to our culture.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m here preparing to launch on the Dolores River to celebrate the end of a nine-year \u2018drought,\u2019 along with many other boating parties. As I walk and think, I can\u2019t help but compare the Dolores\u2019s rejuvenation with the emerging women\u2019s movement toward demanding equality, particularly in the outdoors.<\/p>\n

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I reflect on the last time I was at the Gypsum Valley boat ramp in 2016. Along with two gentlemen, I embarked on a 209-mile journey on the Dolores, a tributary of the Colorado River. We began our trip at the dam on an 80 CFS flow, barely floatable and causing us to walk our boats like pets downriver. We took out in Moab on 24,000 CFS.<\/p>\n

Our packrafting trip was an act of protest, as well as an effort to raise awareness of the dire ecological state of what resided below the McPhee dam. A dam put into place to meet the agricultural needs of the ranchers and farmers on the plateau of one of the most beautiful river canyons in North America. It is the hands around the neck of the lifeline to the entire nature corridor between McPhee Dam and the confluence of the San Miguel River.<\/p>\n

(I won\u2019t force-feed you a choking metaphor to compare the Dolores to how women have felt for centuries, but it\u2019s there. Read between the lines.)<\/p>\n

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Dolores packrafting trip, 2016.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I stop walking to see if I could recall a single dam given a woman\u2019s name \u2014 McPhee, Glen Canyon, Hoover. I wonder why dams often bear men\u2019s names. These dams made by men, built to oppress and prohibit the natural pathways of mother nature. I shrug, no one to see it but the sage and sandstone.<\/p>\n

When we brought our packrafts down there hadn\u2019t been a water release from the dam in five years. If the water managers elected not to do a release in 2016, it would mark six years since the native fish had seen viable flows, six years since the willows and cottonwoods have rejoiced as snowmelt fill their roots. We were the only boaters down there at the time and maybe the only ones to venture down certain sections of the Dolores River in years.<\/p>\n

The last time we were here, overgrown grasses and willows suffocated the boat ramp, the camps nearly unidentifiable. I couldn\u2019t have imagined the scene that unraveled before me when we arrived at the boat ramp this time. I had never seen the boat ramp with so much energy. They had recently installed new sun shades, making the campground more inviting and comfortable. And now, boaters fill every campsite and park their trucks and trailers in the overgrown grass wherever they can fit them.<\/p>\n