On a trip to Telluride, Colorado, Ron Melmon was riding a gondola and saw an empty swath of land. He asked his niece that he was visiting about it. She told him that that’s the Valley floor. Originally, a developer wanted to build on that 600 acres, but the town bought it and had to raise about $50 million to purchase the property to protect it. The process of a small group of citizens banding together to help preserve this land is documented in the 56-minute film “Forever Wild.” Spotting the parcel of land is what inspired Ron to produce the documentary.
“It was a real story about women who spearheaded the cause. It was a story about democracy. It was a story about conservation,” says Ron, who has resided in Sedona for 25 years. “It showed all those things.”
As a producer, Ron says he helped people get what they needed to make the film come to life. Ron describes himself as an entrepreneur. He worked as a photographer in the San Francisco Bay area for many years too. Making the film – his first full-length feature film – was motivated by the beauty of Telluride and his skills as a photographer. Over 70 people were interviewed for the film.
The parallels between Telluride and Sedona are uncanny. “All these wonderful places that we love so well have been discovered. And Sedona is incredibly crowded and having great difficulty with growing pains. Telluride has the same issue,” he says. “The bottom line is there’s so many people now. With these places, if we don’t do something, they will not exist anymore.”
“Forever Wild” has gained traction since it first debuted in 2019. It even took home the audience impact film award from the Sedona International Film Festival in 2019 and is currently airing on PBS. Rocky Mountain PBS first picked it up in April of 2022. Since then, Ron has been contacted by plenty of individuals affected by similar conditions. In the future, he hopes to obtain international distribution for the documentary. He feels that the overall message of “Forever Wild” is worth sharing with the world.
“The bottom line is working together. I want to show how people can work together to make things happen,” says Ron. “It’s absolutely possible.” − Teresa K. Traverse
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