Mina Guli rested under the shade of a tree on a hot June afternoon at Two Rivers Park in Glenwood Springs.
“It is beautiful. It's become my friend. I talk to it every day,” she said, looking out at the Colorado River.
Guli sat with her knees pulled to her chest, hair pulled back into a bun. She wore reflective sunglasses and her signature shirt with a message printed on the back: “2,000 Miles. 100 Days. 1 River. 1 Run.”
Guli is on a mission to run the length of the Colorado River on foot. Really, she’ll run more than the length of the river, since there isn’t a single path along its banks, and accounting for wildfire-driven detours.
To make it to Glenwood, like most days the previous week, she ran a marathon’s distance along the river. Not because she likes running. She said she doesn’t. Instead, she sees running as a tool.
“I want to show the power of going out with our feet and meeting people and getting dirty,” she said.
This Colorado River journey is one of many the Australian activist has run to raise awareness and prompt action on water issues around the world.
“It is a stunt that enables me to get people's attention,” Guli said. “But it is also a way to go and meet people on the front lines.”
She sees the state of the Colorado River as one of the world’s most pressing crises. The river provides drinking water for 40 million people and supports $1.4 trillion in economic activity, according to a 2015 Arizona State University study. But the river has already suffered through decades of drought, and two major reservoirs it feeds reached record low levels this week.
Negotiators for the seven states that rely on the Colorado River have been at a stalemate for over a year in talks to address how to divide the dwindling water supply, with little progress toward a plan that works for everyone.
Instead of asking: “How do you divide up an ever decreasing pie?” Guli wants to try a different approach.
“We need to be making a pie factory,” she said. “How do we bring together communities, governments, and … companies in a way that drives a conversation around abundance in a river system?”
She’s asking the people she meets along the way what solutions look like for them. In Glenwood, Guli met up with local physical therapist Brian Burkhardt to run a few miles along the river.
As the two ran, Burkhardt shared his experience of water shortages and restrictions throughout 13 years living in Colorado. He recalled his time living in Paonia when the town ran out of water, and conversations with the farmers he knows who have struggled to get water shares to fuel their crops.
But despite the challenges, he appreciates the connection to the land that comes with living in rural towns like Glenwood Springs or Paonia.
“I've been drawn to live in communities and places like this because I do want to grow my own food and know where my food and my water are coming from,” he said.
For Burkhardt, living near the Colorado River is a visible reminder of the drought on a daily basis. But he worries that people who live further from water sources don’t realize the gravity of the situation.
“If you aren't seeing these things with your own eyes, I think it's easy to either maybe dismiss or question if what you’re seeing is … real,” he said.
That’s why Guli is talking to people like Burkhardt — so she can take their stories to social media and to policymakers, like Becky Mitchell, who represents Colorado in the inter-state water negotiations.
“The fact that an international advocate chose the Colorado River really underscores that this river matters well beyond the American West,” Mitchell said of Guli’s running campaign.
Mitchell disagreed with Guli’s assessment that officials aren’t hearing enough stakeholder perspectives. But she agreed that, negotiations aside, it’ll take creative solutions to live with less water.
“We really need to shift from a demand-based system to a supply-based system,” Mitchell said. “I hope that she's heard that on the ground, that we really need to be focusing on living within the means of the river.”
Guli said that’s what she’s hearing. She has adopted the same vision for the future, and hopes these grassroots strategies will have a cascading effect.
“This river gives us all the opportunity to use it as a blueprint for the lessons that we can learn, and we can share with other rivers,” she said.
Guli passed through Colorado in June. Now, she’s making her way through Utah. It’s been a tough journey, battling heat and navigating around wildfires.
But she’s met dozens of people who inspire her to keep going, like a river guide who said they had to pivot careers or a longtime Lake Powell local who’s watched the tourism industry shrink.
Along the way, she’s also hosting summits with business and policy leaders to share what she’s learned.
Her goal is to make it to the river’s end in Southern California by September 24. If she makes it in time, she’ll arrive right before the next federal deadline for the seven states to agree on how to share the river’s water.
Regardless of how it shakes out, Guli will try to keep herself — and the river — running.
“If we can find ways that don't involve us sitting in a boardroom or sitting in these negotiation processes, and we can actually start to say, ‘What can we do?’ Guli said. “Then I think we can move the Colorado River forward.”
