River Rose Manley was born in Kansas City, Missouri and moved to Ouray on Halloween in 2009. In five words, she describes herself as “Talkative, organized, slightly annoying, adventurous, and protective.” Her life philosophy is, “Everything happens for a reason;” she finds it important to “be happy but also not be afraid to be sad;” and she finds joy in “seeing other people happy, and seeing people who deserve it succeed.”
My first prolonged one-on-one interaction with River was a car ride to Montrose. We both dance, and she had agreed to drive me to rehearsal since we were called at the same time. The main thing that strikes you when conversing with her is her seemingly effortless amiability. She is nearly always smiling, which, in turn, lifts the spirits of those around her. Conversation always flows easily with River as she always seems eager to find commonalities and connections between your life and worldview and hers. That car ride was full of laughter and free-flowing banter even though I had, up until that point, spent very little time with her.
The person who has had the biggest impact on her is her brother, “Scout, because I always wanted to be like him,” she said: “My brother inspires me. He never really second guesses any decisions that he makes and he’s always really nice to everybody. I try to be nice to people, but he’s nice in the way that is just selfless and takes no effort.”
Although she is excited for the future, she loves Ouray dearly. “There was one day in January,” she recalled when asked about her favorite moment in her life thus far, “My dad and I decided to drive to Silverton because it was really sunny and really snowy and really pretty. That day was really fun because we got to appreciate where we live.” She will miss “the mountains and the people” when she leaves, and has wonderful memories at Ouray School of eating mealworms and crickets in middle school math club and bobbing for apples on Halloween in 4th grade.
“Everybody is like ‘our town is so small I hate it, I wish I went to a bigger school,’ and ‘Our school has no school spirit.’ It does,” she asserted. “Our school has a sense of community that nobody else really has.” She will always cherish the Ouray School-specific experiences of “the views outside of the classrooms and knowing everybody and being able to take a walk down your old elementary school and being like, Woah.”
She is excited to attend CU Boulder this coming fall, with a major in exploratory studies and a minor in dance, but has aspirations beyond college as well. Post college, she wants to “do something that makes me happy and that I love doing every day,” and she hopes “that I don’t stay in the same place. I want to move around. And that I don’t end up in the Midwest.”