Yampa River

I'm still deep in the Yampa River projects and I wanted to share some updates! Audrey Dwyer wrote a wonderful article in the Steamboat Pilot and Today about the mural that we are planning. She asked me a lot of good questions including why rivers are important to me and why I loved spending time rafting and camping by the river when I was growing up. I struggled to put it into words at first, but after a little thought this was my answer:

I love the feeling of being outside in the breeze, by the river, with trees and mountains around. It’s both peaceful and exciting. Being near a big river gives me a feeling of adventure, like the river is flowing past to places far away and it could lead me there too. It also feels like a sanctuary. Because we depend on water just like the animals and plants do, being next to a river is reassuring. The river may be frozen, low water, or flooding its banks, but it’s always there providing water, which is something we shouldn’t take for granted. 

Because of the mural, I've been studying photos of the river landscape for quite a while. Where the Yampa meets the Green River in Echo Park is an amazing place and my family got to go there and camp about a week ago. It was fantastic! Here are a few photos.

Steamboat Rock

You can just see the green color of the Green River where it meets the brown Yampa below the rock wall where it looks like there is a shallow amphitheater.

Here I am carving a little print for the Friends of the Yampa in the campground below Steamboat Rock. They asked me to do the artwork for the t-shirts and poster for their River Festival coming up the end of May. I tried to make it similar to the style of art I used to design the mural, but better suited to printing on a t-shirt. Here's a peak at how it turned out!

So, here's to celebrating our Wild Yampa River during it's spring high water season!!