BOULDER, Colo. — His awe for the tiny details is simply infectious: The moon hanging in the sky in broad daylight. A spiderweb strung between branches swaying slightly in the breeze. How the sun hits the back of a leaf, highlighting a network of veins. It's minuscule — maybe something you wouldn't even notice — but to Jim Morris, it's magnificent.
A brief walk with him will make you slow down and start to acknowledge, and perhaps even admire, these small everyday miracles too.
"It seems like you need to love things in order to care about them, and then you may try and protect them," 76-year-old Morris softly explained on a sunny afternoon in Boulder.
That is what led him to create Jim Morris Environmental & Wildlife T-shirt Co. in the mid-1970s. What started out as a bunch of University of Colorado Boulder students selling shirts to support various causes quickly became much more. Morris dedicated his career to advocating for natural places and felt a good way to spread the word about their importance was through organic T-shirts and sweatshirts, with a percentage of total earnings going toward causes close to his heart. Over the decades, the small business has made regular contributions to dozens of groups, donating beyond $200,000.
Hear more about the early years of Jim Morris Environmental & Wildlife T-shirt Co. in the video below.
Morris gained international love when his business went viral on Instagram in January 2024 with an endearing post of him hopping around in one of his sweatshirts.
He had just hired a digital marketing director and her very first post exploded online.
And the sales followed.
"I still don't believe it," Morris said. "And, you know, I can't figure out how to do it myself. I can upload photos and send them to people, but it's all to Lydia."
Lydia Kramer has run social media accounts before, but this level of engagement was brand new.
"A lot of people in Boulder already knew about the company and knew about Jim," she explained. "But for people all over the world to get to be part of this as well — it just made me feel really grateful that they get to be a part of it, as well as me."
In a rarity for the Internet, the comment section for the company's videos are full of boundless love and adoration:
"I hope to be that happy about what I do when I’m Jim’s age."
"Protect this precious man at all costs"
"Just bought your fox track sweatshirt!! Can’t wait for it to come!!"
"Jim, you are the coolest and thanks for the reminder to notice all the life around us"
While Kramer is moving on to another opportunity in late February — and the company is hiring somebody to take over those responsibilities — Morris has left a lasting impression on her.
"Getting to hear his excitement about birds or something he heard or something he's passionate about has been really eye-opening," she said. "And then also to feel like I'm a part of something bigger as well, especially with how long he's been doing this — it's just a really cool thing to be part of."
Morris, who only started using a cell phone a few years ago, said he typically finds out about the massive social media engagement from his cousins' children, who follow the account.
Hear more from Jim Morris about the start of his company and his rise to Internet fame over the past year in the Denver7 report below.
The posts vary from featuring an artist's new illustration on a shirt to an environmental cause to pieces of Morris' backstory. While his passion is almost tangible through the screen of a phone, and even more so in person, he stands for much more than retro and unique apparel.
His devotion to protecting natural spaces began as a child exploring swamps and admiring birds, cattails and insects around his home in Wisconsin. His parents built a cabin near the Canadian border, and he has fond memories of spotting eagles and ospreys, and kayaking and swimming in the lakes. His fondness for nature grew as the rest of him grew — stronger with each passing year.
To date, he has participated in protests to save whales, written letters to politicians, biked from Boulder to Denver in opposition of a coal power plant, and marched to protect waterways, among much, much more.
"So, there are all these idealistic people just bopping around, and who knows what they look like or what they do, but they have good energy, so it's more fun to be with him," he said. "People of all different religions and sizes and shapes and types that are doing wonderful things."
Over the roughly 50 years he has been in business, he's worked with countless artists to print their work on high-quality organic shirts and sweatshirts. Sometimes they connect through friends or acquaintances, and other times, it's purely accidental. Many of the artists themselves feel strongly about an environmental issue, or try to teach people about wildlife through their art.
"I'd have a little bit of an idea, and that would stimulate the artists to do something that was much better and different than what my idea was," he explained. "There are all these people that have skills beyond going to work and having a time card."
Initially, he rented out a space in his neighbor's garage to print the clothing. But today, the much larger workload is done in a warehouse, complete with a new printer to replace the previous 34-year-old model, tucked near a small pond in Boulder.
Watch Jim Morris give Denver7 a tour of his Boulder facility and hear what inspires him in the video below.
After meeting Kramer at a coffee house and offering her a spot on the team, the company saw not only its name recognition and social media followers grow, but also noticed a spike in sales. Morris said he had been putting some extra cash from his own pocket into the company to keep it going, and is now grateful that he can donate more money to the causes he supports.
Wondering which shirt is his favorite? Well, that's hard to pick. There are a ton of options. But one of the top choices shows a circle of whales around text that echoes the sentiment of a John Muir poem.
"I was trying to write something similar that he has a poem about — if you go into the mountains and get their good tidings, and the wind will blow its freshness into you and stuff like that, approximately," Morris said.
When Denver7 spoke with him, he was wearing a dark green sweatshirt with a heron on the front — the company's top bestseller. He explained how the sweatshirt feels extra nice on cool winter days, when the sunshine can warm the dark clothing.
Another crowd favorite was designed by Morris' friend, and shows the playful image of a mountain goat riding a bicycle in the mountains.
"It's just trying to say, get out of your car if you can, and go for a walk or a bike ride, because you'll see things," Morris explained, reading the text on the shirt. "You'll notice things, you'll see the light on the mountains or the flowers. I've met several friends just because they're often out walking or bird watching on the bike path. So if I'm biking, I see them, and they become friends. You sort of develop a local community of people you know that are nice to you, and maybe you can help them out sometimes, too."
He's a humble man, often shrugging at his own achievements and pointing to the difficult work accomplished by others.
You can try to ask Morris more about his business, but he would much rather talk about the birds flying over him, the ants climbing the bark of a cottonwood tree, or his favorite part of living in Boulder: "The light in the late afternoon, the way the golden light hits trees. And it's so easy to go somewhere for a walk."
"So now, just seeing something in nature — where there's a blade of grass or a leaf turning in the sun and the wind, there's stuff going on that's more interesting than the business, probably," he said with a small smile.
Ironically, he hopes his distinct apparel reminds you of this. It's likely why he's gained hundreds of thousands of fans from around the globe, many eager to see the world through his eyes.
Because simple awe goes a long way in the fast pace of 2025, if you just take the time to slow down and look up.
"I often try and stop for a minute. Every morning I try and go for a little walk... If you have a favorite tree, and you stop and look at the tree, some days, there's an animal up there. There's birds up there. If you look up through the tree branches, you can see things, like the way the clouds are moving, or sometimes birds would be up there flying over you," he said, looking skyward.
"So, there's lovely stuff."
