“If we are to find the dawn, we will need to unsee beyond the noise and turn the ear of our hearts to gather the faces of the nine million. They are us.”
1.
Behind our home Blue River sings night and day.
2.
She finds her source near Quandary Peak on the North Side of the Tenmile range in Colorado. Her first bubbling descends the East Side of the Continental Divide through Summit County past the town of Breckenridge before making her way into Dillon Reservoir and then down past Silverthorne where I hear her sing. For much of her 65-mile life Blue runs North, at times East, until she joins the Colorado River. In turn, the Colorado will trek almost 1500 miles South and West through another four states until her melded tributaries persist in reaching Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.
Lederach, John Paul. “Environmental Silence: A Century Dedicated to the Nine Million.” In Exploring Environmental Violence: Perspectives, Experience, Expression, and Engagement, xii–xx. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
This chapter is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
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