Photographer, filmmaker, and environmental advocate Pete McBride has spent his career documenting the globe, from the peaks of Mount Everest to the ice fields of Antarctica. But when he moved back home, he redirected his focus toward water, and specifically, the Colorado River.
Originally from the Rocky Mountains and now based between Carbondale and Aspen, Pete has spent the past 20 years researching the river and chronicling what he’s learned along the way. That work produced the short film, Chasing Water, followed by a photography book of the same name that won the National Outdoor Book Award. Now comes Witness to Water, his first full-length narrative, a vulnerable, immersive account of Pete’s attempt to understand, and raise the alarm about, what he calls his “backyard river.” The pages are threaded with humorous and personal anecdotes from years spent flying and floating the river.
“It amazed me to learn that the Colorado River, which is nearly half of the drinking water of Denver and the whole Front Range of Colorado, doesn’t reach the ocean anymore,” Pete said. “And it stopped reaching the ocean in my lifetime. So we’ve run the river dry. And, to quote Ben Franklin, we learn the value of water when the well runs dry.”
Pete’s fascination with the river began as a project with his father, a pilot who first pointed him toward water and its outsized impact on the American Southwest, particularly on crop growth and vegetation. The idea for the book itself was born during the pandemic, and took nearly four years to finish. “It took a lot of time and energy. I’d written for a newspaper and magazine a bunch of my life, but it was different with a longer-form book,” Pete explained. “It was a very challenging and all-consuming but very rewarding process as well. Especially when you’re writing about something that is so important to you and to your history, your family, and everything in that realm.”
Released earlier this year, Witness to Water combines Pete’s extensive experience with the Colorado River, his discoveries, and a poignant call to action into one book about the rapidly disappearing water that sustains much of the American Southwest. Earnest, direct, and deeply personal, it’s a reminder of why people like Pete matter: those willing to raise their voices about the environmental issues sitting in their own backyards. With any luck, readers won’t just close the book entertained, but close it ready to do something.
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