It all comes back to the energy of flowing water.
Aimee Cullwick has spent a lifetime getting to the character and magic of water. “I just grew up on rivers; my dad was a big fly fisherman,” she shared in a conversation with The Sopris Sun last week. Cullwick is a Colorado native and was introduced to many water-proximate outdoor spaces as a child. After seeing people kayaking during her teenage years, she took a summer course in the sport her freshman year of college.
Cullwick met her future husband, Antony or “Ants,” and his brother during college. The trio explored rivers, primarily by rafting — bringing along kayaks just for fun. Cullwick has fond memories of an early trip on the American River in northern California. It was in those adolescent and early adult years that she fell in love with rafting. “I knew it would be a big part of my life,” she said.
That notion proved accurate. These days, Cullwick offers annual river retreats for women through her organization, Downriver Divas. This summer marks 10 years since she started leading the empowering retreats, the inception of which marked a return to river guiding for Cullwick. She spent a few years after graduating college as a river rat exploring the American continents and New Zealand by water. When she returned to Colorado in her mid-twenties as a secondary school teacher, she migrated to whitewater in the summertime working a coveted gear-shuttle job in the Grand Canyon.
It was reflection upon the camaraderie formed while on the river that inspired her to start Downriver Divas. To Cullwick, rafting is empowering in a way that’s very graceful and free. The setting and sport are positive for women in a way that may not have been accessible to earlier generations. “Our mothers never had that opportunity,” she said.
She wanted to challenge the “boys’ club” associated with outdoor sports. “I was curious about the river without a specific type of male energy,” she explained.
During her earlier tenure, Cullwick had her share of experiences as the only woman in guide groups, where hierarchies were established and her gender was an automatic qualifier for being treated as an outsider. In guiding empowerment retreats, her goal was to instill the opposite.
For the first several years, Downriver Divas offered three trips a year (around a week each) catered specifically to women for personal growth and community connection. “I was really ambitious in the beginning,” Cullwick said, in part because “I was rebelling against feeling like ‘just mom.’”
She finds that the wild and transitory nature of river trips helps people step away from the pressure of normal life. “This feels like the perfect setting to elevate conversations to be very meaningful, while also preserving play and fun away from everyday stressors.”
And especially in groups of all women, Cullwick has seen participants rediscover their own individual, as well as collective, power. Downriver Divas retreats “have a very protected, healing energy,” she stated — a feeling of rejuvenation and camaraderie she considers sacred. “I want to encourage that energy on the planet.”
In recent years, Downriver Divas has offered just one trip each year. This year, the Kindred Currents retreat runs from Aug. 9 to 16 on Idaho’s Main Salmon River. Enrollment costs $2,750 per person, starting with the $500 deposit. The price includes all rafting gear and premium camping and sleeping equipment, gourmet meals on the river, a passenger flight over the Frank Church Wilderness and gift bags in addition to the connection and community formed with other trip members.
Cullwick hopes to enroll mothers and daughters, cousins, aunts and sisters in addition to individuals. People can contact her with questions by email at aimee@korultd.com or by phone at 970-274-2423.
For more information, visit www.downriverdivas.com