Contributor · Bellingham Washington
Willie, is an ethnohydrologist and expedition kayaker whose work explores the entanglements of water and culture. Through visual storytelling, he examines how rivers become sites of meaning, conflict and resistance. He is RIVERS Creative Director.
Exploration · Dispatch
There is no one true headwaters here, which is to say there is no one true story. Walk a hundred yards along the ridge and the drainage you called the source slips a little east or west. Follow another creek down and you’d be writing about a different river entirely.
Environment · Dispatch
We walk down the bank. Hundreds of coho salmon sit in the river’s channel. From pool to pool we move as they hold up and await to spawn.
Environment · Exploration
Two hydroelectric projects are seeking water rights at the confluence of the Verdeyaku and Jatunyacu rivers, near Tena, Ecuador. Here's what's being proposed, who's behind it, and what it would put at risk.
Exploration
The kayak is strapped to my back, loaded with expedition gear and seven days of food. The trail climbs through old-growth spruce along the Elwha headwaters, the mighty river here is just a creek whispering through afternoon light.
Culture
A small tree stood over the bank. Someone said the words vigilance and care, back to back, like they belonged together. One voice in the circle talked about collectively holding the rights of nature — not owning them, holding them, the distinction doing a lot of work in one sentence.
Exploration
RIVERS reframes what "exploration" means on a river. Not conquest, but presence: a sustained, accountable relationship with a watershed. This manifesto argues that responsible river exploration means understanding a river's full context before, during, and after any expedition.
Woven throughout was a deep respect for water and for our neighbors. At one point in the conversation, he asked me a question I haven’t stopped thinking about since: “How do you make sense of water adjudication when water is life?”
Environment
A source-to-sea inquiry with the Nooksack River.
Projects
A source-to-sea project — film, book, and thesis
Culture · Reviews
In the Spirit of Right and Respectful Relations, as told to Kurt Russo of the Indigenous-led nonprofit Se'Si'Le, is a foundational guide for anyone seeking to build more meaningful relationships with the land, water, and Indigenous peoples of the Salish Sea region—and beyond.
Exploration
Whitewater kayaker Owen Doyle reflects on a one-day descent of Bull Lake Creek. What begins as a technical challenge becomes a “spirit quest,” pushing him beyond physical limits into a deeper relationship with the river—where focus, fear, and flow converge.
Films, field dispatches, and long-form stories from rivers worldwide.