Ode to the Animas

by Chris Aaland

Back around 1990 or ’91, around the time I was nearing college graduation, I wrote a series of short stories about the River of Lost Souls. One reveled in the glory of a one-cast fishing expedition that saw a 20-inch brown trout gobble my woolly bugger less than a city block from my house on 32nd Street. Another delved into the deep sorrow of the murder of my friend and classmate, Ron Brochstein, at law school in Tulsa; we drank a bottle of wine in his honor on the old swinging bridge behind the power plant. Yet another longed for true romance, in the form of a perfect date that culminated with a moonlit walk along the river trail and a peck on the cheek. Others focused on margarita-fueled tubing expeditions, a midnight baptism by a future rabbi under the 9th Street Bridge, the first-ever Earth Day river cleanup and the best greasy-spoon hangover cure around.

I never finished writing the collection. Real life got in the way, what with its hirings and firings, marriages and divorces, births and deaths. But the collection kept building in my mind. The outlines for chapters about burying my baby boy overlooking the river and catching trout below Gus’ grave with big brother Otto, of lunchtime treks to catch the caddis hatch and returning to work stinking of fish, and of christening a wedding-gift

Thanks to Telegraph reader Mike Reuter, who sent us this photo, taken from the 32nd Street put-in last Friday.

two-weight on a 16” rainbow were etched in my brain.

Those stories – part John Gierach, part Steven J. Meyers, part Norman Maclean, part Hemingway, but all my own – take on a new urgency now.

Last Thursday night, I visited the spot where I landed that first-cast brown trout. I thanked the stretch where I walked along the banks hand-in-hand with a beautiful woman on our first and only date. I saw fish rise and caddis flutter. My first thoughts were of the trout that bent my rod and haunted my dreams. After that, I thought of the quality of the water we drink. Then I thought of the economic impact, the fishing and rafting guides, the service industry folks. Who would want to visit a place with a poisoned river?

By Friday, I asked, “Who’s to blame?”

The Environmental Protection Agency clearly screwed up, not just in their botched patch job at the Gold King Mine, but in their painfully slow response to the public outcry from Silverton, Durango, Aztec and Farmington. But to blame the ham-handed efforts of the crew that caused the spill seems akin to blaming a minesweeper for detonating a landmine and blowing off a fellow Marine’s legs. You work at enough mine sites and sooner or later, you’ll make a costly mistake.

The people of Silverton and San Juan County have resisted Superfund designation, but who can blame them? I remember when the Sunnyside Mine shut down in ’91. It devastated Silverton’s economy, yet – slowly but surely – the town showed signs of life as a tourist destination. Their livelihood is always at the whims of weather and economic forecasts.

And the original miners and mine owners? Clearly, they dumped tons of toxic sludge and waste into ponds, deserted mineshafts and elsewhere. Can we apply today’s laws and ethics to the past? Anyone who traces their family genealogy back to the late 1800s in the San Juans takes pride in the work these pioneers did. I’m sure proud of the Telks and Feaglers in my family tree who lived and worked in Telluride from the 1880s through their relocation to big cities on the Front Range in the 1950s.

I’ll tell you who’s to blame. You and me. Most of us sat on the sidelines and did nothing the past two decades. Sure, there were visionaries – college professors, scientists, environmentalists and other rabble rousers – who tested the waters and raised their voices. Trouble was, not enough of us joined in the chorus. Some of us, like me, shopped at farmers’ markets with our reusable grocery bags, stuffed our faces and filled our bellies with microbrew and organic produce. We even composted and recycled most of our refuse. We danced to the bluegrass, did our yoga and lived the hippie dream. But did we write our elected leaders? Did we organize forums about water quality? Did we ever do anything other than wince when driving past the tailings ponds on Red Mountain Pass?

To the right, the agricultural community has rallied for less government meddling. The right often views the left as extremists, wanting to mercilessly tax and regulate them. I sympathize with them, too. The Aaland/Smith side of my clan farmed and ranched. Salt of the earth people, indeed. Now some of our ranchers along the Animas have groundwater saturated with “yellow boy.”

Rather than point the blame at each other, why don’t we all rally for a common cause? Homegrown kale and tomatoes don’t do so well when watered with iron, arsenic and copper. And cattle and sheep don’t like it much, either.

More than 50,000 abandoned, toxic mines dot the Mountain West. This wasn’t the first time the Animas was poisoned. It happens every day through discharges down Cement Creek and in nearly every major watershed in the West.

For the past 25 years, nearly all of my writing has been for a paycheck – be it from the Telegraph, the Herald or my PR career at my alma mater. Aside from a few rambling observations of tragedies or triumphs of the personal, regional or national nature, most of it hasn’t come from my heart. Today is different.

Larry Hartsfield, Paul Pavich, Gordon Cheesewright, Carroll Peterson and David Petersen didn’t teach me to mail it in. Gierach, Meyers, Maclean and Hemingway certainly didn’t. I need to dust off my copies of Cadillac Desert, Desert Solitaire and Lime Creek Odyssey. I need to monkeywrench again. My disobedience should come in the form of letters to Michael Bennet, Cory Gardner, Scott Tipton and John Hickenlooper.

Otto and Rosie deserve clean drinking water and the chance to catch a 20-inch trout on their first cast. So do you and I. We call the Animas our lifeblood. The time has come for us to unite and act on its behalf. There’s no reason for another lost soul.

Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas, fish full of mercury? Email me at chrisa@gobrainstorm.net. n