Past & Present in the Crystal River Valley

Field notes from a new storytelling project in the Colorado Rockies.

The Crystal River Valley. The name invokes a vision of some kind utopian natural paradise, where clear streams flow through alpine meadows, surrounded by snow-capped mountains that appear just like a polished image from a postcard. The reality is not far off, at least as far as the landscape is concerned. But the human experience of living in such a place is not only defined by the environment, but the complex social, historical and cultural contexts in which we are always enmeshed but not always aware of. It’s a reality we must face if we are really interested in beginning to understand a place, its story, its people. With an outsider’s perspective and curiosity, this is what I am attempting to explore.

I’ve been in Colorado for a week so far — an impromptu trip instigated by a long phone call with a friend where I was explaining how utterly draining this year has been in terms of freelance creative work. Trying to understand the needs of a client who doesn’t know what they want, with a completely mismatched sense of aesthetic and style, eventually led me to a deep period of reflection and questioning. An invitation to decide what I actually want to do with my work, not only as a means of creativity but also for income. A decision that all creatives have to make, often multiple times throughout their lives.

Storytelling was the reason that I was drawn into photography and film, it was the ability to communicate something about a subject which could otherwise not be communicated, to speak to something transcendental that exists within all of us. A language not only written, but also (in the case of film or video) manifesting through music, colour, tempo. It was on this basis that the subject for a potential film had emerged. Thanks to Tucker D. Farris for the instigation.

The American West is no longer a frontier of colonialism and settler expansion, yet it still exists as a frontier of the wilderness — despite being threatened by the continual expansion of industrialisation and perpetual economic growth. A recent struggle to preserve a previously unknown wilderness area called the Thompson Divide became the focal point for a clash between the corporate fossil fuel giants and locals who wish to maintain the natural wonder of the surrounding area. After our phone call, I got to work in assembling a vague starting point for a potential project. It grew into something that seemed to have real significance, a story unique and complex with many layers to it, as many good stories do. It seemed to be something worth pursuing. I booked my tickets and the plan was set.

A few weeks later, I find myself standing next to the Thompson Creek, a stream that is fed from the mountain springs in the Divide. Old-growth forests of fir and aspen grow across this narrow valley, filtering the midday sun through needled leaves. It is the kind of place that seems untouched for millenia, aside from the dirt track that passes parallel to the river. It is the kind of place that is worthy of protecting. But it also begs the question — why should we so desperately fight to protect it from the impact of our own selves?

It would be impossible to speak of the topic of conservation without paying tribute to the original inhabitants of these lands. Before they were expelled in the 18th century, the Utes once roamed these mountains and valleys. Because of their cultural beliefs, there was no question of the need to fight between preservation and industrial extraction when it came to the natural world. The idea of owning the land was abstract at best, and certainly illusory in practical reality. It’s an ironic circumstance when current inhabitants discuss methods for living more in harmony when this practice was already embodied by those which they displaced. But we cannot go back, only forward.

With this film, we aren’t seeking provide answers or strategies to our current predicament, but perhaps we can begin to ask questions as to how we can shift our cultural paradigm to a more regenerative system. Without understanding how we got here, it would be impossible to do that. And so with a few hundred years of history, archive footage and newspaper articles from the 1800’s, we begin the process of unravelling this complex topic, thread by thread.