Durango’s Christopher Blevins turned in his mountain biking kit for a suit and tie earlier this month. Blevins went to Washington, D.C., in early December to talk with members of Congress about protecting the outdoors.
Blevins made the trip with fellow outdoor Olympic athletes and with Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit organization that focused on protecting outdoor land from climate change through nonpartisan policies.
“POW has a very specific mission, which is to mobilize outdoor state, they call it, outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds,” Blevins said. “It started with ski and snowboard sports primarily. Whether you're back East or in the Sierras, it's realizing winters are getting shorter. Science of climate is a science and a lot of these industries rely on us acting. A place like Snowshoe, West Virginia, where I race all the time, won't have snow in 10 years if we don't act on climate. So it's a cool mission and they have a fairly robust and strong lobbying aspect which I think is quite unique.”
Blevins has been a member of POW since 2021 and had always wanted to go on one of these trips but the timing hadn’t lined up until this month. He didn’t know what to expect from this three-day trip but he wanted it to be impactful and not feel like a field trip.
The trip ended up feeling effective for Blevins. He met with a lot of members of Congress from both sides of the aisle and staff members. Blevins said he learned a lot. There were a lot of people working who were around his age; they were very approachable and friendly. In a different life, Blevins could’ve seen himself going to school for policy and working in an office.
“The outdoors, in particular, is quite unifying,” Blevins said. “General things that were all inarguable like clean air and clean water in a healthy environment, are good starting points to have some of these conversations and try to build relationships.”
One of the senators Blevins connected with was Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Blevins was born in Albuquerque and admires Heinrich’s pragmatic approach to getting things done.
Blevins also attended the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Summit (SEEC) and his film, “How to Recall” opened up the SEEC. He didn’t know it was going to be played until the day before. It was viewed by about a dozen Congress members and President Joe Biden’s environmental senior adviser John Podesta.
“It was a reflection on how innate it is to really want to protect places that we play in,” Blevins said about his film. “For me, the tug, so to speak, to go outside and ride my bike is kind of the intrinsic motivation to care about the places I get to ride in. So it's sort of a reflection, a sense of how we can naturally show up in these conversations.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
