Rivers are not born in one place. Their source, or headwaters, are drawn from a confluence of springs, glaciers, fens, streams, and creeks that forge the origin of a watercourse. 1,700 miles north of the Sea of Cortez, the Green River emerges from the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, where the river runs not green, but turquoise.
This color is created by glacial flour, drawn down from the mountains hanging above the valley. Throughout the watershed, dams sieve rivers of sediment, removing the organic color variations created by minerals and algae accumulated from the river’s downstream passage.
Here, the Green River still runs free and sings its name. From its alpine source to Fontanelle Dam, the river drips, tumbles, and flows without diversion.
Like its downstream color shifts, the Green River has undergone several name changes. The Shoshone people referred to its waters as Seedskadee, or prarie hen. Padre Silvestre Velez de Escalante renamed it San Buenaventura after a thirteenth century theologian. Later Spaniards entering the area simplified it to Río Verde, which was translated to Green River by early nineteenth century fur traders.
We hike beside the river along the Continental Divide Trail, a popular thru-hiking route traversing the spine of North America from Canada to Mexico, that parallels the Green River. My partner Aaron and I giggle when somebody asks, “Are you nobos?” shorthand for northbound thru-hikers. Our backpacks, far from light, and loaded with a week of food and supplies, are topped with rolled packrafts, PFDs, and 2 and 4-piece paddles awkwardly strapped to our packs.
Since yesterday, we’ve followed the river’s languid path, meandering lazily through meadows of waist-high grass between the slopes of the glacially carved valley. Hiking against the current of backpackers, we stop every few minutes to scout the river for fallen trees and debris. Strainers like these present tremendous hazards. They are opportunities to get stuck, pop a boat, or worse, held under water.
As the trail climbs, the trees grow dense, and water rushes loudly. We walk through an opening between the trees and watch the water swiftly thread a series of boulders. It pours over a pool drop, and slips through more fallen trees, churning up whitewater in the turquoise river. There is little space on the banks to get out of the narrow channel and walk around the obstacles.
The river, not our mapped route, determines our course. We retrace our steps back to where we noticed the first fallen tree. Here, the low gradient of the river and broad shorelines make it possible to bypass any trouble. We hoist our boating gear into one of the few pines not deadened by bark beetles using nylon climbing webbing. Back on the trail, with noticeably lightened packs, we can move swiftly toward the source, a trek of one more day.
Snowmelt trickles below the boulder field, as we scramble up the high pass toward the headwaters. Steep walls of granite impede any hint of where this steep route leads, until we round a corner, endure a few more uphill steps, and look out on Peak Lake, the first major gathering of the Green River. Though the lake shimmers beautifully in mid-day, we are alarmed by the noticeably warm temperatures at 10,515 feet.
Carrying only light day packs with water, snacks, and rain jackets, we move at the pace of water. That is, we stop constantly to admire it. Sunlight refracts off the surface of the lake, drawing ephemeral golden ribbons against sheer granite walls that nearly disappear into the lake. A narrow path of gravel allows us to tiptoe to the alpine tundra beyond.
As we ascend toward the glacial cirque, clouds form overhead as part of the procession toward afternoon thunderstorms. Though we’ve heard boomers daily, no rain has fallen, and the skies seem to dry heave. Without heavy packs, we move swiftly.
Stroud Glacier is determinedly the largest source of the Green’s headwaters. The massive sheet of ice curves beneath the jagged cirque of 13,000-foot high peaks. As the glacier retreats, its bergschrund, where moving ice separates from the primary mass, forms an ever steepening headwall. Tumbling boulders echo metallic, as thunder does in this alpine amphitheater. Ever in motion, the glacier spurs rocks to fall along with it, forming a sloping terminal moraine of debris that momentarily holds a catchment of turquoise water and glacial sediment beneath the high peaks.
Clear droplets dance off rocky ledges, trickling onto a serpentine polished granite boulder. Emerald mosses burst from the cracks. The fan of rock debris, created by glacial retreat, no longer is crowned by ice. At least on the surface. The remnant glacier, now protected by the rock fall, is what melts into the rivulets before us.
The alpine stillness amplifies the symphony of moving water. Flowing streams vary in notes by size set to the steady percussive beat of beads falling one by one, onto rock for bass and into water for cymbals. Beyond this melody, a whirring sound of wind and water blurs through the air, its origins less distinct but no less commanding.
Impressive as it is, the state of this glacier reveals the mammoth loss of ice, day after day, season after season, and in no decade as quickly as the last two. The glacier is to the headwaters what the bathtub is to Lake Powell––a visual yardstick of loss. Yet no men manipulate or pull directly on water levers here. The result is entirely climactic but no less human induced.
Tucked away in this remote Wilderness, the headwaters of the Colorado River Watershed sound an alarm. Are we listening? The watershed supports 40 million people in 7 Western states, 30 Tribal Nations, and Mexico. I try to imagine what the source once sounded like in peak runoff, before human induced climate change began taking such a toll.
Sonar shifts announce the varied terrain through which the river travels. Water drips from the stoic slipping glacier, shaking and rattling through rock gardens to abruptly rush over a fall. Still pools, stained matte blue by glacial flour, leak along the imperceptible slope angle, slithering through streamlets of smooth silt.
The source of the river is not a mere beginning, it is the always. At least that is our perception. The aridifying West shatters that conception. Be it from our own hands or the epochal upheavals in nature, there is no stasis on earth. We grieve not just a river, but our innocent underlying illusion of immortality. Not of our own flesh, but of the world we expect to someday carry on beyond us.
Five days later, back in the valley, we retrieve our gear from the tree. We inflate our packrafts, relieved that for the next 13 miles we won’t have to haul anything on our backs. We walk down a steep embankment to a gravel bar. The granite massifs of Square Top and the Bottle cast shadows across the forest of spruce and fir. In the chill air of morning, low fog hovers over the river.
Before launching, I close my eyes and listen to the calm current, while the wild symphony of the headwaters still fresh in my memory, harmonizes. A red tail hawk swoops overhead. The day warms quickly, and the water is glassy. We refrain from paddling because we do not want our time with the river to pass too quickly. The constant meanders looping through the meadow help to ensure that. So does the headwind at Green River Lakes. Our arms kick into gear.
It took extra effort to bring 15 pounds of boating gear for a few hours of floating. Although the Green River is gorgeous, I am certain we would not have paid it the same attention without the boats. Our intention to float even a small segment attuned our attention to the river’s details at every turn. In total, we spent seven days backpacking, climbing as high as 12,775 feet. Yet, it is the river that will continue to flow through our dreams.
Within days of our trip a wildfire sparked near Green River Lakes, burning areas of forest we floated through. With it, came mandatory closures of the Bridger-Teton Wilderness. Had our timing been slightly different, we would not have seen the Green River as we did. Now, it is likely no one will for decades.
Visions of fire along with glacial retreat at the headwaters exacerbate my climate anxieties. And yet, time spent out in nature forces us to live with change. Both the realities of fossil fuel emissions the world is failing to curtail, and the dance of earth’s natural processes. Forests regenerate naturally from fire. Rivers naturally change course. Between my hopes and fears about the future of places I love, it is the time spent immersed in these landscapes, and floating the rivers threading them, that carries me on.
___
Morgan Sjogren writes about Western land and water from the heart of the desert. She is the author of Path of Light: A Walk Through Colliding Legacies of Glen Canyon, a 2025 Utah Book Award Winner and Utah Library of Congress Selection. She is currently walking, floating, and listening to the Colorado River Watershed while writing her next book to be published Torrey House Press. You can read more of Morgan’s “Wild Words” on Substack and follow her on Instagram @Morgan.Sjogren. She is based in the Colorado Plateau canyon country and migrates seasonally throughout the Southwest.
