Climbing the Melody

Friends –

There is a small bird that I came to know almost 40 years ago. She has held on to my heart ever since I heard that first song in the Escalante River Canyon. Since then I hike often around the red rock country in the Southwest and I feel most fulfilled if I hear her sing once again.

Canyon Wrens are hard to spot, as they are small and their brown feathers with touches of orange and white blend in so well with their rock wall habitat. Her music does not have that same limitation as it seems to reach out to your ears without any guarantee you will ever find her with your eyes. Yet I look for her every single time because the melody compels me so.

So you can probably imagine how rewarding it was that I heard her song every single evening during our 8-day raft trip through the Grand Canyon. Her tunes would prance down from the high walls and reach us wherever we were camping and I would be soothed.

This painting, "Climbing the Melody", celebrates both the amazing slot canyons in that Grand Canyon National Park as well as my fantasy of finding the canyon wren waiting for me at the top of her cascading song.

Thank you to Deborah Askew who lent me her photograph to help recall the colors that overwhelmed us every day during that float.

'Climbing the Melody' is an 11x14" oil on canvas and is available with your donation to a worthwhile non-profit.

margie lopez read