Images By and An Interview With Photographer Bill Wylie

Fort Collins photographer Bill Wylie, who is a philosopher at heart, recalls his RiverWalk along the 75-mile Cache la Poudre River with intense fondness. With optimism, adventurous spirit, a heavy backpack, and his camera gear, he started on Memorial Day 1996 at the Poudre's confluence with the South Platte near Greeley. For 12 days, he trudged along banks covered with thick brush and cottonwoods, through chilly rainstorms and bright sunshine, post odious feedlots where animal waste drained straight into the river, into and out of Fort Collins where the stream is often riprapped and closed in for flood protection, through budding farm lands, up the scenic canyon, and across the wilderness to the waterway's source at Poudre Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Running his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, Bill says in an interview that he took his RiverWalk to develop a photographic panorama that will impress upon people the diversity, fragileness, resilience, and importance of the Poudre. That he did. His black- and-white RiverWalk photographs have been displayed throughout Fort Collins to viewers who have been genuinely touched by the artwork.

The journey turned out to be a spiritual and philosophical awakening that few of us are fortunate to experience.

"In some parts of the journey I could imagine what Eden was like," Bill says. "In the eastern stretch of the river there are lush, incredibly beautiful bottomlands with thick cottonwood, grasses up to my chest and wild asparagus everywhere. I would come around a bend and there'd be a fox trotting around over there and five deer standing there, with an owl sitting in a cottonwood."

Then again, Eden become spoiled, right? And at times Bill's sojourn faced the same fate.

"I went around one bend and found myself facing Windsor's sewage treatment plant. Walking by feedlots I could see the waste flowing into the river, and there were junk yards and other sights that were not so pretty.

"I developed the notion that what we humans have now are small islands of wilderness. This was really a great revelation for me. I've lived here for over 20 years and I've spent a lot of time fishing and photographing the river, but it wasn't until my RiverWalk that I realized how very little I know about it."

Bill's connection with things of nature began as a youngster. He grew up in Chicago, but always felt more connected to nature than concrete sidewalks and skyscrapers. He came here to attend Colorado State University (CSU), but dropped out after one semester. He spent the next seven years wandering, rock -climbing, fly fishing, skiing, and, as he says, "just basically experiencing the outdoors in a way a Midwesterner wouldn't have the opportunity to."

He become enamored with photography and did freelance work until he realized he needed more formal training. He enrolled at CSU and graduated with a focus in art and photography. From there, Bill went on to get a master's degree at the University of Michigan and teach four years at the University of North Carolina before returning here to work as a photography instructor in CSU's art department.

"When I was teaching back East, every summer I would return to Fort Collins and fish the Poudre or backpack in the mountains," Bill remembers. "This is where I really wanted to be. So I gave up a fairly secure teaching position and moved here without a job."

All of this is a roundabout way of getting Bill to the fishing spot on the river in the Poudre Canyon where he experienced an epiphany. He looked out at the river and saw how the water was glazed from a waft of sunlight.

"When I first saw that, I began thinking that this would make a really beautiful picture," Bill says, "and then I started thinking there was more to the river than just a single photograph could capture."

So he took up river photography, mostly using his car to drive him from one place along the river to another where he could find a good shot here and there. Then he realized by going from one spot to another he was missing a lot of what the river has to offer.

Those thoughts led to a discovery that often guides philosophers, poets, artists and others of a creative bent: To really understand your subject, you must become fully immersed in it.

That, quite frankly, is what led to the idea for the RiverWalk.

When you view Bill's visual essay on the river - he has dozens of photographs that make up his shows - you immediately notice that his artwork shows no humans. He did that on purpose.

"I originally thought about having humans in the photographs, but every time I went to shoot a picture, the place seemed more interesting without humans. There's another reason, too. if there were people in the photographs, then the viewer would look at the photos and say, 'Oh, there's someone there. I wonder what he's doing?' rather than focus on the river or the light on the trees or the way a rock looks.

"The way I tried to include the human influence is to have a spillway or a fence in some photographs. I wasn't trying to create a pristine, peopleless, beautiful wilderness that really doesn't exist. I was more interested in looking at what is there now, even if that included showing how a place was changed by humans."

Bill's involvement with the river has led him to discover an insight that many conservationists tend to stumble over on their quest to understand Nature: Everything in Nature is interconnected.

At one time in the not-so-very-for past, people believed it was possible to change one aspect of Nature without impacting the entire system.

But not so, as we have discovered.

For a very recent example, consider the recent floods in North Dakota. One reason the flooding was so severe is because a large percentage of the riparian wetlands there have been destroyed for the sake of agricultural or suburbia. Wetlands act as sponges, soaking up spring snowmelt and rains, and slowly release the water as time passes. Without the sponge effect, the water suddenly rushes together to create floods.

"I've come to realize it's impossible to isolate one area of Nature and protect it while thinking the integrity of the whole can be maintained," Bill points out. "That's one important reason why I wanted to photograph the entire river -- to get people thinking about the whole length, thinking that it all needs to be protected and cared for, rather than just a piece here and another piece over there.

"At the some time, of course, we have to use the river. People need water. Agriculture needs water. But how much can we afford to take and still protect the integrity of the ecosystem? That's one thing I like about the RiverWalk project: It made me ask myself questions like that."