I will guarantee that if you love rivers, Southwestern river history, art, and a well written book... and if you have a coffee table, this book should be on it. Rebel of the Colorado would not have been written without Harry Aleson’s spirit looking over Renny’s shoulder to be sure he got it right.

An artist, naturalist, and writer, Renny Russell would prefer to be “on the loose,” rather than trodden through his beloved Southwest, or rowing his dory Seedskadee than to be stacked between the pages in some research library. But when Renny takes on a project it seems like food and sleep are only minor distractions in his determination to overcome the occasional frustration, hopelessness, and other obstacles he encounters.
For the last decade Renny worked on his latest project, Rebel of the Colorado: The Saga of Harry Le Roy Aleson, a biography of eccentric river runner Harry

Aleson. Anyone who remembers, or is sad about the loss of Glen Canyon, will be moved by what may be the definitive book on Colorado River runners in the Golden Age of river running during the 1940s and through to 1965. It is a large format book embellished with striking photographs taken prior to the flooding of Glen Canyon, many by P.T. Reilly, with illustrations by Renny. But it's much more, as Rebel of the Colorado chronicles the iconic river runners Aleson ran with from Norm Nevills to Georgie White, both Colorado River legends. It follows Harry’s footsteps through the trials and tribulations he encountered—hardships that we cannot imagine today. This book is not a pedantic rewriting from historical documents. Russell knew Aleson, and draws his lyrics from that personal attachment.

As a young man, Renny Russell set out with his brother, Terry, from their Northern California home to discover and explore the American West. The result was On the Loose, which chronicled their adventures and became an anthem for a generation, and continues to speak to readers of all ages. But the story doesn't end there. A profound journey marked by the loss of his brother to the powerful forces of nature on the Green River, and his return to the river years later to come to terms with it, are beautifully recounted in Rock Me on the Water: A Life on the Loose.

Renny has embraced life through art and books, where his love of nature extends to observations of the sacred, profane, and humorous in the world around us. His current adventure is the art of book binding and restoration of books as art. His love of books and appreciation for the traditions provide ongoing inspiration as he combines the bookbinding with his artistic roots in the Southwest. Through it all, he has maintained a healthy skepticism for societal constructs that pale in comparison with the powerful laws of nature. He lives in Questa, New Mexico, where he pursues his many interests in art, bookbinding, boat building, and nature.

I have been with Renny from the earliest spawning of Rebel of the Colorado, watched it grow through childhood and adolescence, and evolve into golden maturity. It was not easy to take the sometimes over-exacting nature of Aleson’s writing (at times documenting the date and time of every activity) and produce an accurate and very readable history of Aleson and all of the planets circling his galaxy. Settle down in a chair and hold the fascinating life of Harry Aleson in your hands, and you will tread lands barely seen by people, endure hardships, and overcome difficulties of an earlier time. Harry did these unbelievable things because they were there, because he wanted to do them, and maybe even to boost his ego and self-worth.

After Harry died, Dock Marston wrote to Harry’s wife Dotty, “There is no question that Harry was a unique person. He should be good background for a readable biography as a different human. The major importance of his effort is unquestionable. If you conceive and execute a readable biography, there will be little danger of anyone scratching the reference background looking for corrections... The field is wide open to imagination.”

Fictionalize Aleson? Renny wanted to tell his story straight without embellishments or the constraints of publishers’ manipulations, or concerns about who his audience might be, or how many copies he could sell. As Renny labored through the years, Dock and Dotty’s letters haunted him and raised the bar demanding that no matter how long it took, it was Renny’s responsibility to produce a compelling and artful book that would do justice to Harry Aleson’s life’s wanderings, to those colorful eccentric boatmen, to recall an era before modern industrialized commercial river running conglomerates, and to revisit a landscape that had shaped Renny Russell’s own life. And he did just that.