Roy Everett Young

January 29, 1948 — March 19, 2026

Roy’s love for immersion in nature began with his Maine childhood, and right from the beginning included his gift for catalyzing love and fierce devotion to the natural world in others. His actions on behalf of earth, and empowering people to take action to defend and heal the earth, continue to ripple out, proving over and over that one person can make the world a better place.

Love for wild nature came easily. Roy was the surprise second child in his family, with a brother 16 years his senior (Tod, still with us). All accounts indicate a childhood spent running wild in the woods, guided by voracious curiosity.

As a high school student, Roy read an article in Reader’s Digest about Euell Gibbons, the wild plant forager. Roy was fascinated and wrote Gibbons a letter. That summer, Gibbons drove up to Roy's house in Maine and convinced his parents to let Roy go with him to help build the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School.

From West Falmouth, Maine, Roy went on to Duke University, studying geology on a Navy ROTC scholarship. When he registered as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war in 1968, the scholarship was withdrawn. His parents, Raymond Orrin Young and Doris Elva Dickey, remortgaged their home to finance his remaining Duke education.

One graduate school trip found Roy digging fossils in the Green River Formation in Wyoming (legal at that time on BLM land). When he ran out of gas money in Denver, he sold a few of the fossil fish he’d gathered, and thereby began his career as a retail geologist. Soon he was traveling to natural museum gift shops with a van full of rocks. In the early 1980s he began to be invited to geology conventions to sell his wares, and those sales allowed him to open his own storefront business, in 1986, with the first Nature’s Own store in Nederland, Colorado.

Just as important — probably more important to Roy at the time — were two other threads in the fabric of a full life: his actions as an environmental activist and his passionate devotion to river running.

In 1976 Roy moved to Boulder, Colorado, and along with Pete Grogan co-founded Boulder EcoCycle, one of the first curbside recycling programs in the US — with a pick-up fleet of re-purposed school buses.

In 1978 Roy took part in what had been planned as a one-day civil disobedience action at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant (in Colorado, between Boulder and Golden). This turned into a weeks-long occupation of the railroad tracks, blocking the passage of ore into the facility and refined uranium out, with eventual arrests and trial. Roy was chosen as a spokesperson early on in the occupation, and then as one of ten defendants to represent the over 200 arrestees at trial. Though his science-based testimony was eloquent, the Rocky Flats Truth Force lost the case. Roy continued as an active participant in ongoing efforts against the plant, which finally closed in 1989. Roy also participated in backcountry civil disobedience in 1986 at the Nevada Underground Nuclear Weapons Test Site. This is a sampling — the list could go on.

River rafting became the perfect vehicle for Roy’s geological passions. From the mid-1980s, he outfitted annual Grand Canyon trips during which he loved to talk geology as the boats passed deeper into the layers of time revealed by the carving of the Colorado River. A frequent topic was The Great Unconformity — in fact The Great Unconformity would often become Roy's moniker for the rest of the river trip after his talk. Friends who knew him as a boatman called him fearless. “Any time he was near water, his eyes sparkled.”

As Nature’s Own became more and more successful, stores were added in Fort Collins, Breckenridge, and Boulder. Roy’s goal for the stores themselves was that they help people understand earth science, geologic time, and extinction — directly, through the minerals and fossils featured. His goal for the stores’ profits was to fund environmental activists’ work around the world, especially through small localized initiatives — “Why we do what we do,” as Roy put it.

Roy was instrumental in establishing several of the organizations Nature’s Own supported, often extending creative means of support over long stretches of years. One example of especially ingenious philanthropy was turning over ownership of the flagship Fort Collins store’s historic building to Idea Wild and then paying Idea Wild a substantial monthly rent for use of the space. As Wally Van Sickle, Idea Wild’s executive director, said, “The rent alone has funded over 2000 of our projects and the events we have had in the building have made another 900 possible. The reliable monthly income has also stabilized the organization and allowed IDEA WILD to thrive and not surf up and down on the fundraising roller coaster.”

Nature’s Own’s current two locations, in Fort Collins and Nederland, will continue under the able leadership of Roy’s wife Rosa Venezia and his long-time business partner Kate Readio. Profits will continue to be funneled to projects of these five organizations, keeping Roy’s influence spreading in ever widening circles even though he’s gone. Donations may be made in Roy’s honor to any of these…

Center for Biological Diversity: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.biologicaldiversity.org__;!!M2D_dUfSiN4E!NAnMlGdOjkxgj-2OUG0ASZw39xgJMyQmn0-Y2i6gPcYtbOz5Uu6vpwzc3OX2Eka_AiYK5ZThqETss_FTt4gQRUJGUaXf-w$ [biologicaldiversity[.]org]

Global Greengrants Fund: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.greengrants.org__;!!M2D_dUfSiN4E!NAnMlGdOjkxgj-2OUG0ASZw39xgJMyQmn0-Y2i6gPcYtbOz5Uu6vpwzc3OX2Eka_AiYK5ZThqETss_FTt4gQRUIa3uyegQ$ [greengrants[.]org]

IDEA WILD: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ideawild.org__;!!M2D_dUfSiN4E!NAnMlGdOjkxgj-2OUG0ASZw39xgJMyQmn0-Y2i6gPcYtbOz5Uu6vpwzc3OX2Eka_AiYK5ZThqETss_FTt4gQRUJX7xQ9-Q$ [ideawild[.]org]

Rainforest Action Network: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ran.org__;!!M2D_dUfSiN4E!NAnMlGdOjkxgj-2OUG0ASZw39xgJMyQmn0-Y2i6gPcYtbOz5Uu6vpwzc3OX2Eka_AiYK5ZThqETss_FTt4gQRULcIJYF6Q$ [ran[.]org]

Wild Earth Guardians: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.wildearthguardians.org__;!!M2D_dUfSiN4E!NAnMlGdOjkxgj-2OUG0ASZw39xgJMyQmn0-Y2i6gPcYtbOz5Uu6vpwzc3OX2Eka_AiYK5ZThqETss_FTt4gQRUI5uwSEIg$ [wildearthguardians[.]org]