Last weekend, another iconic place in the Southwest was lost. Known to the boating community as Ponderosa Canyon, this stretch of the Dolores River was named for its towering ponderosa and Douglas fir trees lining feisty, fun rapids framed by red sandstone cliffs. The lush canyon was burned over by the Ferris Fire. We mourn the loss of such a magical place, adding to an ever-growing list of landscapes that once were.
The Dolores River has been in steady decline since the construction of the McPhee Dam in 1985. A river I once ran at over 4,000 CFS has been reduced to a trickle, except for a few days in wet years when dam managers could not stop the runoff. Perhaps it is appropriate for the slow death of a river to end in cremation. Or maybe the story is not over, yet to be rewritten by climate change and the inevitable litigation over our most precious resource: water. Water may again flow through the canyons, not for any ethical or environmental reasons, but to meet the senior water rights of California. Perhaps there is a bit of irony in the possibility that nature may force man’s behavior to undo his overreach.
Peter Robinson
Durango/Mancos