Thursday, April 17, 2014

The Disapearing Rio Grand

AZ 2000 colin above canyon country
Colin McDonald looking out over Utah's canyon country on a trip we took in high school.
Colin McDonald is one of my oldest friends and he and I shared many formative adventures. Since then he has worked at several major newspapers and pursued a career in environmental journalism tinged with on-the-ground exploration. He has kayaked the length of the texas coast dodging oil tankers, documented river obstructions from the water, biked closed roads and shared many other stories.

His latest project is a bit bigger.



He plans to travel the length of the Rio Grande from its headwaters in Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico by raft and, for the 600+ miles of the river that rarely contain water these days, by foot. He'll be documenting his journey and exploring issues surrounding the river as he goes. He will be bloging for the Texas Tribune via satellite and I'm looking forward to reading his posts.

Colin has spent the past months preparing as Ted Scripps fellow in Environmental Journalism at UC Boulder and will begin his trip in June. He started a kickstarter project to raise support for gear for himself and for parts of the trip. It is a cool project and I encourage you to both support him and follow his progress. His kickstarter will be finishing soon and every additional bit of support he gets will help him tell more and better stories.

(Also, I apologize for the slow post rate lately, we have had a lot of things going on but will be posting more regularly soon.)