For more than a decade, Rick Reavis has helped connect visitors to the science, ecology, and wildflowers of the Gunnison Valley through RMBL’s Visitor Center and Gothic Store and Interpretive Wildflower Tours. A longtime educator, ski instructor, and Crested Butte Wildflower Festival volunteer, and author of Rocky Mountain Wildflower Guide Crested Butte & Beyond, Rick shares how three generations of his family became connected to RMBL — and why RMBL’s wildflower tours offer far more than beautiful views.

RMBL: How did you first get connected to Crested Butte and RMBL?

Rick: Our connection actually started many years ago through our oldest daughter, Jamie. She was interested in biology in junior high and high school and attended the summer youth camps at RMBL. She’d spend summers out with the scientists doing field work, and that really got us involved as parents. Today, she’s a biologist teaching biology at the high school level in South Georgia.

RMBL: How did you end up working at RMBL?

Rick: When we began spending summers in Crested Butte, I was teaching horticulture at Oklahoma State University–Oklahoma City and then left a tenured position to start a landscape design-build business. We eventually moved to Crested Butte full-time, and I worked as a ski instructor. I just finished my 16th winter as a ski instructor here.

Rick Horn, the RMBL Visitor Center and Gothic Store manager, is also a ski instructor, and he knew I had a science background in plants. One day, he said, ‘Have you ever considered coming out to the lab and working at the Visitor Center?’

I hadn’t, but he persuaded me. At the time, I was also working as a hiking guide for Crested Butte Mountain Resort, kind of a resort naturalist. I worked one summer at RMBL, went away for a year, then came back. My wife, Margaret, and I now split our time between Crested Butte and Oklahoma, but this will be my 10th summer working in Gothic. You learn something new every day, and you do stay humbled every day out there.

RMBL: Why should people take a wildflower tour?

Rick: To explore, discover, and experience the natural beauty we have in Crested Butte. I have found it to be astoundingly unique.

Our interpretive wildflower tours give guests an opportunity to identify a plant and learn what the scientists are studying about that specific plant. That helps our guests better relate when they’re out on a hike with family or friends. They can see a flower and know that it has been researched maybe by David Inouye and many other scientists for decades.

We know we have a changing climate and how that changing climate is affecting the phenology [or timing in the biological life cycles] of our area. We also have a strong Ute heritage in Gunnison County, and a lot of our plants have a connection to the Ute tribe.

So why would a guest want to sign up? It’s fun. One will learn about the RMBL connections, natural history, and plant identification. Our knowledgeable IWF guides connect with the guests and guide folks in a journey of discovery.

RMBL: What’s your favorite part about leading tours?

Rick: The enthusiasm that I see with the questions that I’m asked. I get to share my enthusiasm for RMBL.

Say you have a family come into the Visitor Center or sign up for one of our tours, and there’s a young adult present. Sometimes at the end of the tour they’ll ask, essentially, ‘What’s in it for me? What can I do here as a volunteer?’

I’ve had children come through the Visitor Center who come back to RMBL as a high school student in one of our education programs or come back as one of the undergraduates in our undergraduate research program.

So, that’s exciting — to be part of giving back. I think that’s an easy way to think about it. It’s this love of education, of sharing. RMBL is kind of a family, and to be part of that, it’s pretty special for me.

This summer, our oldest granddaughter, who is 17 and interested in environmental sciences, will come out and spend some time with me and some scientists. Two other younger grandchildren, Madison and Ava, have also spent summers visiting field sites and working with scientists. So, there’s a little serendipity there.

RMBL: You’ve also literally written the book on wildflowers here: Rocky Mountain Wildflower Guide Crested Butte, Colorado & Beyond. Tell us about that.

Rick: Students, scientists, and the public not from our area would come in asking questions about local flora, and we had a couple of guides that really were not applicable for our area.

There was an undergraduate student working part time at RMBL who encouraged me and said, ‘Why don’t you write a guide?’ I always kept that in mind, that there might be a need, and so that’s why I did it.

It’s a guide that’s been updated three times. I recently gave the rights to the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. I wanted that guide to be perpetuated after I’m long gone.

After selling close to 6,000 copies over the last few years, I knew it was time to reprint, update, and let the Wildflower Guide “blossom” into something bigger. It became something greater than I could manage.

It’s mostly Crested Butte, as the title mentions it encompasses the Rocky Mountains and many other mountainous areas around the country. People who have purchased my book use it everywhere from Alaska and beyond. There was a scientist who said, ‘I love your book because we use it in the Grand Canyon, on the North Rim.’ I was like, ‘Really? Cool!’

RMBL: What’s happening this summer between RMBL and the Wildflower Festival?

Rick: This is the 40th anniversary of the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival.

Last year and this year, we kind of formalized the partnership between RMBL and the festival.

There are five RMBL scientists and three staff members that will take participants out to field sites or on town tours. For example, David Inouye and Will Petry are going out on their plots. Rick Williams is doing a tour of the herbarium. Rosemary Smith is having a science discussion over lunch. Bobbi Peckarsky and Steve Horn will be sharing their years of RMBL experience over dinner. Greta Schoonover and I will be guiding a historic town and science tour. Moreover, billy barr will discuss with folks his weather station.

It’s a good public outreach for RMBL, and I think education is where we need to be.

RMBL: What are you most excited about this summer?

Rick: Every year’s different. Every summer is unique.

It definitely looks like it’s going to be an early season. That gives us an opportunity to educate the public about the changing phenology of our area and how snow, water, and moisture are so important for the ecology of our area.

It’s not all doom and gloom. There are challenges. Some plants are doing better than others, but there’s definitely a change in the air, and it gives us an opportunity to share that message with the public.

RMBL: Do you have a favorite flower?

Rick: People ask me all the time, ‘Do you have this favorite flower or favorite hike?’ It’s the trail I’m on at that time, or it’s the plant that I’m identifying at that moment.

But if I had to pick out one plant, there’s a monocarpic perennial plant called Alpine Sunflower, or Old Man of the Mountain (Hymenoxys grandiflora). It is found in subalpine to alpine areas. It will live for several years and bloom once and then die.

Why I like this plant is that it’s only found in higher mountainous areas. One knows you have earned it when you see this plant; you’ve made it to the alpine zone. Many times, you’ll see a large display of blooms, and it’s spectacular. It’s pretty humbling to see that plant. That’s the cover of my field guide.

Copies of Rick’s Rocky Mountain Wildflower Guide Crested Butte & Beyond can be purchased at the Visitor Center and Gothic Store.

— Interview by Suzanne Ennis
RMBL Communications Manager

Top: Rick hiking at RMBL. Photo courtesy of Rick Reavis