I was tempted to turn my head lights off the moon was so huge tonight. Driving east from Glenwood Springs up through the Canyon the moon hung in just the right position I was bummed there were tools in my truck instead of a rod. A giant harvest moon, spawning Brown Trout and a streamer rod and I am late for work tomorrow morning.
I took a quick drive to Basalt to check out an open house for a new Water Use Commitment on the upper Colorado River tonight. I won’t bore you with details that I needed an interpreter for and there are 100’s of these issues on the table here in Colorado alone. They all look the same in the end, we are running out of liquid. The “shuffling” of water around on a couple of water sheds on my turf is going to make things look different in the near future. It’s happening everywhere and the experts say “the glass isn’t half empty, it’s almost dry”. We already cheat the laws of gravity for the sake of Kentucky blue grass on the front range. Water that naturally flows west from our side of the divide is pumped and sloshed through an elaborate maze of tunnels and ditches to faucets in Denver and surrounding areas. Western communities survive by collecting water, basically every year. It’s not like there is an insurance policy the size of lake Powell stashed away for low water years. We modern age western folk basically live pay check to pay check as far as H2O goes. I once read that each American uses 1500 gallons of virtual water daily. That’s the water in all the little details that make up your day, from the shirt you wear, the cool aid you make your ankle biters to the wrapper on your Whopper Jr. So as we continue to flock west, each person requires a certain amount of water. Each small fry born to the mountains of the west must be accounted for in the budget and almost 2 years ago I messed with it myself (i guess Sam's mom is part responsible). I think about what fishing here will be like for Sam when he is 40. It largely bums me out. The needs of man will continue to mess with these delicate watersheds and it seems inevitable that the business of recreation on these gems will be the first to loose, along with Sam.
On most water sheds that are bumming you can usually bank on finding good water and fish by going higher. There is a definite purity to everything as the elevation increases. The Colorado is a huge river and I’m already along way away from the drain, I can’t get much higher.
I took a quick drive to Basalt to check out an open house for a new Water Use Commitment on the upper Colorado River tonight. I won’t bore you with details that I needed an interpreter for and there are 100’s of these issues on the table here in Colorado alone. They all look the same in the end, we are running out of liquid. The “shuffling” of water around on a couple of water sheds on my turf is going to make things look different in the near future. It’s happening everywhere and the experts say “the glass isn’t half empty, it’s almost dry”. We already cheat the laws of gravity for the sake of Kentucky blue grass on the front range. Water that naturally flows west from our side of the divide is pumped and sloshed through an elaborate maze of tunnels and ditches to faucets in Denver and surrounding areas. Western communities survive by collecting water, basically every year. It’s not like there is an insurance policy the size of lake Powell stashed away for low water years. We modern age western folk basically live pay check to pay check as far as H2O goes. I once read that each American uses 1500 gallons of virtual water daily. That’s the water in all the little details that make up your day, from the shirt you wear, the cool aid you make your ankle biters to the wrapper on your Whopper Jr. So as we continue to flock west, each person requires a certain amount of water. Each small fry born to the mountains of the west must be accounted for in the budget and almost 2 years ago I messed with it myself (i guess Sam's mom is part responsible). I think about what fishing here will be like for Sam when he is 40. It largely bums me out. The needs of man will continue to mess with these delicate watersheds and it seems inevitable that the business of recreation on these gems will be the first to loose, along with Sam.
On most water sheds that are bumming you can usually bank on finding good water and fish by going higher. There is a definite purity to everything as the elevation increases. The Colorado is a huge river and I’m already along way away from the drain, I can’t get much higher.
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