The River's Path

There’s a Light
— Beautiful chorus

There's a light so bright
Burning deep inside
You got to feed it
Heed it
Let it be your guide
It's the only hope we have
The only hope we have

Spirit's calling
Through heart's desire
Destroying fear with love's fire
Sleeping warriors now awaken
To the cries of those forsaken
It's the only hope we have
The only hope we have

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

I Go Among Trees— Wendell Berry

Don't believe us when we say our trips are memorable? Hear it for yourselves! Visit www.theriverspath.org / Google Reviews to read more reviews from our previous paddlers.

Thank god its Tuesday! Have a good day! - The Rivers Path

Happy National Dog Day! These are The River's Paths pups - Oso and Rollie.

Rollie is a 3 1/2-year-old mini-Australian shepherd. I adopted him early November 2021 from a couple who purchased him from a breeder as a puppy. They had a baby soon after adopting him, and they decided that they didn’t have the time and energy to give Rollie what he deserved. The reason I got him actually began long before Rollie was born. I adopted my first Aussie in 2001 when I was 23, and he was with me for almost 15 years. My veterinarian called Oso my soulmate, and he definitely was.

Oso was headstrong, enthusiastic, fearless, and my constant companion for the formative years of my adulthood. I was sure that he had to be immortal, because he certainly had more near death experiences than I can count. He had more lives than a cat. He jumped out of a second story window, out of the car while on a crowded street, climbed to impossible heights and stared at me, waiting for me to catch up. I couldn’t reach some of the places that he found himself! He tried to make friends with a porcupine who didn’t appreciate his advances. He was also bitten by a rattlesnake because he stuck his face in a prairie dog hole where the rattlesnake that was trying to hibernate. At the end of his life in 2021, I was shocked and devastated that the euthanasia worked, and that he was gone.

In October 2021, after searching, I saw Rollie. They are almost identical, but Rollie weighs 20 lbs. less. I had just lost land that I loved to a forest fire and a 3-year relationship had burned along with the land. I needed Rollie’s kisses, which he was happy to offer.

Rollie isn’t Oso. He is as adventurous as Oso, though, and more attached to me than any dog I’ve had in my life. He relaxes when he climbs into my lap, somehow thinks he is still puppy sized. He loves camping, canoeing, hiking, chasing rabbits, and climbing to the top of impossibly high rock faces.

Three words to describe him: enthusiastic, affectionate, and adventurous. Insecure, too, but that only comes out in certain situations. He’s improving every day!

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in
the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than
what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.
- George Washington Carver

Happy Friday! - The River's Path

📸 Photo Credit: David Roederer

A beautiful quote. Always remember: we are all one choice away from changing our lives.

📸 Photo Credit: David Roedecker

📸 Photo Credit: Scott Henderson

What kind of gear do you need to bring on our More-Than-A-Healer trip? 🤔

Group gear provided includes: canoes, paddles, life jackets, canoe seat backs, camp chairs, full kitchen setup. Supplies provided include: all food, shade canopy and river toilet with a privacy shelter.
Your personal camp gear that you are responsible for includes: tent, tarps, sleeping bag, and anything else you need that is not provided. That being said, we highly recommend you approach this with a minimalist mentality. Everything you bring, along with your canoe partner, must fit on your canoe. We will supply you with a complete packing list.

📸 Photo Credit: Scot Henderson

This beautiful plant species is the Prickly Pear Cactus. There are about 190 different species of the prickly pear - all coming in a variety of sizes and known to live over 20 years. The leaves of are usually flattened and paddle-like in shape, and are covered in spines. They also have clusters of tiny, barbed spines called glochids, which are located above the regular spines and hard to see. The fruits of some prickly pear are edible, with many health benefits, and are sold in store. The pads of the plant can also be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. However, these plants must be handled with extra care to avoid the glochids.

Can The River's Path lead a custom canoe trip for my group?

Yes! We can do private canoe trips for your group. These are some of our favorite groups to work with!
• Organizations focused on healing, personal transformation, and nature connection, serving
○ at-risk youth
○ single parents and their children,
○ drug addiction recovery organizations,
○ mental health programs
• Senior centers, independent living facilities, etc.
• Groups led by Wilderness Therapists and Life Coaches,
• Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts
• Church Youth Groups
• Companies who want to do a team-building retreat
• Realtors who want to offer gift certificates for a canoe trip to their clients
• Families, groups of friends, etc. with children ages 5+
• Nature lovers, bird watchers, etc.
• You, your friends, your family, and your visitors from out of town!

📸: Photo Credit: Scott Henderson

Weekends are for poetry, river trips, and wholeness. Happy Saturday! - The River's Path.

Happy ! Just a gentle reminder to take a moment for yourself today! - The River's Path!

📸 Photo Credit: Scott Henderson

Every day trip is its own unique experience. The River’s Path is the only canoe outfitter in Colorado that offers half and full-day guided canoeing trips. We are the only canoe company that has access to the St. Vrain River. This beautiful river is only half an hour from Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins. Despite the short distance, canoeing the St. Vrain River feels like another world!

📸Photo Credit: Scott Henderson

While in camp, in addition to our theme program activity, we may swim, take short hikes or explore side canyons. After we all pitch in during camp setup, we’ll have plenty of free time to relax, enjoy our surroundings and have the opportunity to get to know each other as we experience the beauty around us. Then we’ll come together each evening around the campfire.

To learn more about our upcoming trip visit 🚣 www.theriverspath.org/more-than-a-healer-with-monika-denise/ 🚣

Just a little . Happy Monday! - The River's Path

Meet Monika Denise - Utah Guide,

After several years of time dedicated to my own soul journey, I am pulling together the threads of professional experience with my relationship to the sacred and recognizing that in this synthesis, I can offer something unique as a Medicine Woman of the Soul.
I am a trauma-informed, board-certified art therapist. I am drawn by an embodied mystical way of being, and am frequently found journeying the inner depths of the soul. I wander, sit, and connect with the sacred. I ground my energy through sacred chants, drumming, and music. I create with my hands; listen with my body, art and dreams; and weave with my spirit. I see you, where you are, with love. I am gifted a healer’s presence.
I am shaped by the lands that weave through my life path.* The Shenandoah Valley, the mountainous land that gave me roots. The Green River and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the desert lands that invited my soul into pilgrimage. The Bellingham Bay, the water’s edge that is inviting me into freedom. With a bow to these lands, beings, and the humans who have been in relationship with them since time immemorial.

📸 Photo Credit: Scott Henderson

Two days after the mandatory evacuation lifted, a rainbow framed our tiny home once again. Safe. 3 days after Hotlum burned 3 years ago, a rainbow appeared, shining bright and filling my eyes with tears, gratitude, and hope. I don’t know that the land I loved had burned completely until a few days later. Is this becoming a tradition? Fire turning me into a puddle of terror and trauma, follows by a rainbow, assuring me that things will be okay.

Highway 34 finally opened up again. I believe it opened this morning. I drove up to Viestenz-Smith Memorial Park to see how close the fire had gotten to crossing the highway and running south to our home. The firefighters performed a miracle. It was SO close. I felt a mix of gratitude for the people who worked to protect so many of the homes threatened by the Alexander Mountain Fire. In Cedar Cove just up the road from the park, the fire scorched the ground only feet from the homes there. But not a single home burned. The fire did not cross the Big Thompson river at any point, even though the plants right next to the river were blackened and charred, or gone completely.

It was a miracle. Seriously. I am so, so incredibly grateful and I am in awe of how close so many people were to losing their homes. Some did, but so many of us didn’t. Incredible.

I still feel the trauma of the Lava Fire and the Cameron Peak Fire coursing through my nervous system. But I feel gratitude too, sitting right alongside the tension and fear of losing our home to this fire

Flow with the water,
let it clean you
Play with the fire,
let it free you
Run with the wind
and let it breathe you
Sit with the earth and
let her teach you

Let Her Teach You - Fia

It’s over and the ranch we call home is safe and sound. We got the all clear only an hour ago!!! I’m so relieved.

Eastern sun, melt the cold from my bones
Curtain rise, take the darkness from my eyes
Breathing in, pulling life into my lungs
As a child, I am born, again.

Eastern Sun - Ayla Nereo

Ever wondered what a day trip on the St. Vrain River with The Rivers Path would be like? Wonder no more! Check out these reviews from our previous trips! For more information, questions, or to book a trip visit www.theriverspath.org . Happy Friday!

Edward Abbey, Down the River:

Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one
another, we take the sting from death. Loving our
mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve
all enigmas in contingent bliss.

I have a really sweet community. Thank you so much, all of you who have offered to help. I am usually very fast with decision making but that’s nearly impossible when there are fires burning to the north and south of us… and indecision is poisonous to any sense of safety or certainty of any feeling of control that Scott and I can have about an incontrollable situation. Not knowing is the hardest part of all of this. Are we safe? Are we going to lose our home tonight? Will the fire spread or will it not? If we don’t move the house will we regret that tomorrow? If we do how hard will it be to put everything back together after all of this is over? The house is a wreck right now. All of our skirting is in shambles. We disassembled our deck and got the bolts off that attached it to our home. That was a big pain in the butt, let me tell you!!

Dishes are packed, books are off the shelves, we just have to tape the cabinets shut, somehow anchor our appliances in place so our refrigerator doesn’t end up face down on the floor, bouncing around in transport and destroying our cabinets.

We figured out how to disconnect our solar panels and disassemble the array of panels so we have room to get the house out if we need to.

It has taken hours. Thank you so much to all of you who offered to help!! After discussing it, we decided that we really didn’t know enough about WHAT we needed to be able to guide anyone in what to do to help.

We still may move the house out tomorrow but as for now, we both feel a whole lot calmer and a whole lot more confident that this beautiful ranch will be just fine, and my landlady can rest assured that this land that has been in her family for over 100 years will survive for another year. And then another, and another.

I think we are going to be okay. There is a cool breeze blowing right now as it does almost every night. It’s gentle, and this valley is quieter than ever. Crickets, an osprey, and a single nighthawk sing in this evening’s chorus. Not a single dog barks in this valley tonight. That NEVER happens.

It’s peaceful up here, and we really don’t want to leave. But the dog food is in Scott’s parents basement. Our toothbrushes are there, our pillows, our blankets, and all of our clothes. We returned with the clothes on our backs, and a few things that are still in the back of my truck from our evacuation 2 days ago.

It’s probably best anyway. Last night i had as many nightmares about our house burning as I had dreams about an unexpected torrential downpour, tapping a cadence on our roof that was 10 miles from the cool basement where we were sleeping. In those dreams, I knew the fires were out. I woke in a panic as often as I woke feeling relief.

Maybe we can go home for good tomorrow. I sure hope so.

Thank you again, all of our sweet friends who offered to help. I love you all so much. I am filled with gratitude tonight.

May tomorrow bring cool weather and unexpected rain. Sweet dreams to all of you who may not be able to be home tonight. And to the rest of you too!!

We are more than just a canoe outfitter near Denver.

We are The River's Path 🚣

How can I move so quickly from numbness to racking sobs? Awe and terror, simultaneously, watching an incredibly beautiful sunset through clouds of smoke that turn the sun into a glowing red orb, pyrocumulus puffs of clouds turning every color you would expect from a sunset- orange and red and pink and yellow.

The red glow of the mountain west of us burning, twinkling like a line of bright red stars in the fading light.

Racking sobs, the strong urge to just go to sleep and wake up in the morning not in my partner’s parents’ basement but in the loft of our tiny home in the most beautiful place I have ever lived. I wish that was possible.

I wish that the corner where I watched the sunset tonight with a horde of other people, some evacuated, some afraid that the fire will turn into another nightmare like the one that happened south of here, burning entire towns and a thousand homes and businesses. Please God, no. Not that. Please.

Please.
Please, God. I don’t pray as often as some. But when I do, I pray hard.
Please. Please let this fire subside tonight. Please let the fire 8 miles south of our home subside tonight. Let the fire 4 miles north of us subside tonight. Let a miraculous soaking rainstorm appear out of nowhere, soaking the parched black earth.

Let the ground be covered with biochar much like we created at Hotlum 3 months before we lost everything to the Lava Fire. That biochar that was supposed to enrich the soil, creating space for a new healthy forest to flourish. Let that happen here, tonight.

That’s what we wanted: that’s what we envisioned on the slope of Mt Shasta. That’s what I envision here, tonight. Enriched soil, ready to grow a healthy, beautiful forest.

That lightning strike in June 2021 made quick work of clearing the land- what would have taken us years to do happened in an hour or two. But it didn’t happen the way we had hoped.

Not again.
Please, God, not again.

Remember Cameron Peak? Remember that terrifying snowstorm that extinguished the fire and saved who knows how many homes, including mine? I remember driving to Utah to lead my first canoe trip with Craig Childs, the trip taking 21 hours instead of 7 because of the sheet of ice that stretched across hundreds of miles of I-70? It was the scariest drive I had ever taken. But, was it as scary has having to evacuate my home in October 2020, unsure if it would be there when we got home? I don’t know. The trauma of that October lives in me every time it snows, and every time a tiny puff of smoke arises from some mountain on the horizon.

This is what trauma is. An event happening right now, in this very moment, that is not at all what happened in the past. But it feels like the same thing happening all over again.

My body reacts as if it is the Cameron Peak fire, the East Troublesome Fire, the Lava Fire, and the Marshall Fire all wrapped into the current moment… the current moment when the Stone Mountain Fire threatens Lyons to the south and our home 7 miles to the north, and the Alexander Mountain Fire threatening masonville and Loveland to the east, so many communities in the mountains to the north and west, and our home 4 miles to the south. Stuck between 2 growing fires with no containment, and my body reacts as though it is this AND each of the other fires that have threatened or burned places I love.

This moment is not 2020. It’s not 2021. It’s not even last week or next week. This moment is this moment. Nothing more, and nothing less. The fear I’m feeling is anticipation of the unknown. Even though I’ve been through this before- many of us have. This is not all of those fires wrapped into the present moment. Those were different fires than this one.

When something scary happens on a river, we learn from it. We have a conversation about risk management: what went well and what we can improve in the future. We make a plan for the future, ensuring that our ability to keep everyone safe improves every time a new situation occurs.

Fire isn’t like that. We can’t anticipate what’s going to happen this time. I can’t learn from this and avoid being threatened by fires in the future. I feel helpless.

Prayer seems like a tiny, almost pointless thing. People say that we should give it up to God. I don’t know. Sometimes that’s all we can do. Maybe if enough of us pray for rain, the skies will fill with clouds and we’ll awaken in the middle of the night to a downpour. Maybe.

I’m trying to find hope in all of this. Hope has felt much further away in the 3 years since the Lava Fire. I’ve been tucked away inside myself, trying to heal and all the while be a good partner to Scott, a good whatever-I-am to Scott’s children, a good dog parent to Rollie, a good friend to a whole lot of people, and a good business owner and guide. I somehow manage to remember the wisdom I still have inside me when I’m guiding on the river. Thank God. I don’t know what I would do if it didn’t.

I need ease. I just want some ease after 6 years of challenge… a growth spurt? Don’t growth spurts end sometime?

Maybe tomorrow we’ll wake up and the fires will be out, and the ease I’ve been craving will somehow fill all of our lives. May ease fill the lives of every one of us who is afraid we are going to lose our homes in the coming days. Everyone who has lost their home in the past 24 hours. All of us.

Please, God, bring us rain, and give us some ease for awhile. Please?

Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his
eyes off his goal.

Obstacles — E. Joseph Cossman