On my last day in Durango, Colorado, I felt so mystical and full of hope that I decided to stop by the town psychic on my lunchbreak to get my cards read. Here, in the bones of a Western frontier town, Texan tourists and Patagonia-loving locals stroll down Main Street. I passed the imposing Strater hotel, with its red brick and white crenellations, the Diamond Belle Saloon, where just the other night I had listened to live ragtime piano as I was served by a corseted waitress, her curls piled high and topped with a feather. The crystal, candy, and candle shops, the dusty tourist stores fueling my postcard addiction, and the cavernous outdoors depot where I had purchased my first dehydrated camping meals. Cream and Berry, the ice-cream joint favoured by locals, whose name I could never get right (Berries and Cream?). The Balcony, a fabulous open-air bar on the roof of a two-story building, where you could listen to live music, sip a beer, watch the sun set over the foothills, snack on the world’s greatest deep fried pickle slices, and talk to some interesting strangers.
Let’s dial it back, though. On my short flight from Denver to Durango I was greedy: soaking in the splendor of the Rockies’ jagged peaks. A jaded local snored loudly beside me the whole way. My boss, Grant Wilson, Executive Director at Earth Law Center (henceforth ELC), picked me up from the tiny airport in his SUV. The twenty minute drive to the condo I would be staying in featured a free audio-tour by Grant, who gave me an epic lowdown on the range of activities awaiting me in Durango and the surrounding areas: a ton of natural hot springs, an old movie theatre, a ride on a historic stream train, and even a river you could float down for hours in an inner tube, armed with a book and a cold soda. “Alright,” said Grant, lugging my ridiculously overstuffed suitcase up a flight of carpeted stairs, “this is you.”
The next day was a busy one for ELC. They welcomed a gaggle of new interns, launched the Earth Law Summer Course 2026, and inaugurated the Thomas Berry Law Library, which would serve as our workspace for the summer. Picture forest green walls, a vintage burgundy area rug, bookshelves a repository of Earth law knowledge classic and contemporary: jurisprudence, ethics, religion, and Indigenous wisdom. Windows overlooking the train station, us surrounded by reddish mountains on all sides, sipping on local wines, noshing on chocolate almonds, olives, and edible-sparkle-infused cheese.
We learned about a recent resolution to recognize the rights of the Animas River which had passed unanimously at city council. The campaign behind it was led by a class of first year Fort Lewis College students. But it’s not just the young people who care about nature here. Durango is a gateway to the unreal beauty of Southwest Colorado: glacial blue rivers snaking through canyons, the towering San Juan mountains memorialized on the Coors beer can, the remnants of quaint mining towns dwarfed by their alpine backdrops. Stags walking the suburban streets at twilight, dozing on lawns as dogs bark at them through the window. Red-rock mesas, black cows grazing in the plains below. Waterfalls bluer than a slushie with pools at the bottom so cold that I screamed upon entry.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s impossible not hold nature in your centre here. Here, where you’ve escaped the matrix and entered the real-life Windows screensaver. Durango is the perfect headquarters for ELC, a not-for-profit whose advocacy stems from the not-so-radical proposition that the wellbeing of nature should be at the centre of our legal, political, and economic decisions. Grant and the team work internationally on their mission to give nature a voice in the legal system. My work this summer centred on water justice and the health of riparian ecosystems from Montauk, New York to the blue heart of Europe in the Balkans.
Durango, meanwhile, was in the midst of a drought. The Animas River was unseasonably low—not much snow last winter. No rain this summer. Dry air invited nosebleeds and chronic congestion. Still, we got out there and sweated it out: the ranchers, hikers, bikers, and ELC interns alike. It did not hurt that the other interns were the coolest people ever, also keen to explore, my built-in circle of Colorado mates. We went to our first rodeo together, a junior one, featuring five-year old mutton-busters and nine-year old wranglers in pink cowboy hats. Those horses shot forwards like bats out of hell, but those kids held their own—there was not too much tumbling. We liked it so much we went to a second rodeo. After that we had had enough of rodeos, but that was no issue—there was always plenty to do.
On my last day in Durango, the drought broke. Massive storm clouds hung low and heavy in the sky. I made it to the psychic’s shop, and was greeted by a “Sorry, we’re closed” sign and a locked door. Maybe this too was fate, because at that moment raindrops began to brush my shoulders. I ran back to the office clutching a stack of magazines I had raided from the tourism centre with dreams of a future collage. From the safety of the Thomas Berry Law Library, I listened to the torrential desert rain as it seeped into the cracked yellow lawns, the scraggly riverside, the slithering body of the Animas.
