Text and photos by Jack Olson
Drop—-drip—drop. We’re on top of the Continental Divide in Colorado. I love the Continental Divide. My mind capitalizes it. For one thing, it’s high. You can see for miles and miles. In winter in Colorado it collects oodles of snow. Oodles.
There’s a snowbank. It’s feeling the warmth of the sun. The snow gives up one little drop of water. Just one. It plops on the tundra. Plop. It joins a few other drops. Water can move only one direction. Downhill.
Soon several drops form a rill, then a rivulet. It’s not long before the rivulet has a name, Straight Creek. You could step across it, but not for long. Other rivulets join in and Straight Creek widens. Recreationists have heard about this metamorphosis and soon hikers walk along to admire the stream and the wildflowers which are nourished by it.
Straight Creek, and it clearly has a notable name now, is babbling. You can hear it from the trail. It doesn’t seep, it doesn’t creep. This is a full-throated babble. A hiker might try to jump it but will most likely end up with wet blue jeans.
The creek picks up speed and size as it rushes unhindered downhill. But framing its plunge wildflowers compete for space along the banks. Other flowers admire the scene from high on the hillsides and ridges. By the time Straight Creek reaches a mile from the Divide it is an out-and-out torrent.
And then it makes a sudden turn and tumbles downhill gouging a canyon for several miles until it makes an abrupt stop and takes a rest in Dillon Reservoir. Here our drop has an opportunity to visit Kathy and Wayne Turner at their home.
Its rest over, our drop plops into the Gold Medal fishing waters of the Blue River and starts its first, and only, path north. It has one more rest in a reservoir but hears a thrilling rumble in the hills ahead. This is no ordinary joining of creeks. This is the Biggie itself—the Colorado River. From now on it’s no nonsense as the Mighty Colorado tears through valleys and then starts its awesome and unrelenting journey west and south.
Our little drop can barely catch its breath as the Colorado slashes through the layered rock of Glenwood Canyon. There’s a chance to slow down flowing through the Palisade peach orchards and Grand Junction. (Many people are not aware that until 1921 the Colorado was called the Grand River, hence many place names called ‘grand.’)
The Colorado gently flows through Rattlesnake Canyon and into Utah. Our little drop has quite an experience ahead: Canyonlands National Park, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. And it all started in that snowbank atop the Continental Divide.
The Colorado gently flows through Rattlesnake Canyon and into Utah. Our little drop has quite an experience ahead: Canyonlands National Park, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. And it all started in that snowbank atop the Continental Divide.