A climber describes her passion for the wildness of the world. My brother’s cheeks smooshed against the blue velour seat and his mouth hung slightly ajar. His gangly legs stretched from door to door, covering the back bench of our family Buick. On the floor, parallel, I fidgeted over the… Read More
Activism and the feminine spirit unite to save Europe’s last wild rivers. Mornings in Fojnica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, bring a harmony of Franciscan monastery bells and the broadcast of Fajr prayer, the valley draped in fog and wood smoke. As the fog lifts, hills speckled with the first yellows of fall appear, sloping… Read More
Bosnia? Isn’t that one of those war-stricken, ex-Yugoslavia states? Hmm, I don’t know much about it but it doesn’t sound too tempting. That’s what I thought when Patagonia sales rep Christof Menz contacted me in early 2016 with the idea to make a fly fishing film about… Read More
Europe’s last remaining wild rivers are at grave risk. This time the danger isn’t coming from excessive drought or factories dumping toxic waste—it’s coming from the very hydropower dams that claim to bring us clean, green, renewable energy. The fact is, dams are dirty—and their destructive impact far outweighs their… Read More
The Vjosa River flows 270 kilometers without barriers from the Pindus Mountains to the Adriatic Sea. It’s one of many rivers in the Balkans that are under threat by a tidal wave of more than 2,800 new hydropower dam projects. In March 2018, Patagonia joined grassroots groups and regional community… Read More
As I wake, I become aware of the shovel-scraping-asphalt croak of a blue heron, or the brilliant complex cascading song of the winter wren, or the yammering calls of the kingfisher being chased by an accipiter. In the fall a flock of kinglets, moving through the trees and shrubs surrounding… Read More
Salmon have sustained the Nimiipuu people since time began for us. Nimiipuu means “the people” and is one amongst many names the Nez Perce call themselves. The loss of healthy numbers of salmon returning up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to our traditional lands in Idaho and Oregon, where we have… Read More
It is with great pride and excitement that we are sharing The Super Salmon with the world—a little movie about the Su and the spotlight it’s been in these last few years. From the first screening in Talkeetna a year ago, to the dozens more that have… Read More
You have to hand it to them. It was a wildly creative and successful bait and switch—perhaps the biggest con ever played on the once wild west. The terms were simple. The public would okay the construction of fish-killing dams and other habitat destroying activities. In exchange, the government would… Read More
One of the most powerful scenes in Damnation is where a way of life going back over 15,000 years is suddenly brought to an end due to the construction of a dam. When the Dalles dam was built on the Columbia River it submerged Celilo Falls and took… Read More
On Saturday October 3, 2015, over 300 people—fishermen, Native Americans, farmers, orca lovers, business owners, students, salmon advocates, kayakers, and conservationists—took to the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington, a short distance from the Lower Granite Dam. Together, this diverse group formed the “Free the Snake… Read More