This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The first rock hurtled past Roger Hill’s head and plunked into the Arkansas River on a summer day in 2012. Hill, then 71, stood hip-deep in the flow, clad in waders, and clutching his fly rod. Atop a steep bluff, a woman — whose name, Hill later learned, was Linda Joseph — glowered down at him. Hill was trespassing on private property, Joseph shouted, and flung another rock. “If she’d hit me with a baseball-sized rock from 50 feet up, honest to God, it would have killed me,” Hill recalled.
Hill retreated, but the dispute was only beginning. The next time he waded to his favorite spot, some 20 miles upstream of Cañon City, Colorado, Joseph’s husband, Mark Warsewa, left a note on Hill’s car that threatened him with arrest. Hill stayed away, but in 2015, two of his buddies returned to fish. Warsewa emerged from his riverfront home with a handgun and fired a shot in their direction. The bullet struck the surface a mere 15 feet from the anglers.
Although Warsewa got 30 days in jail for his stunt, the issue that ... Read more
