It’s one of those perfect winter days. It’s sunny, dry and unseasonably warm for February. My husband, Matt, and I head out for a trail run and I pack my watercolor kit since I never know when I’ll find something I want to paint. 

We drive the winding McElmo Canyon road towards the Sand Canyon trailhead near our home in southwest Colorado. It’s crowded when we pull in. We’re not the only ones who thought to enjoy the warmth. The trails are one way, so we see very few people as we start up the sandstone. 

We reach a trail junction and start jogging down the reddish-brown path. The main drainage drops off on our left. We haven’t been to this canyon since last fall and it feels good to be back on the trails. 

Junipers and piñons fly past as we run. We stop to peer down into the canyon at a viewpoint. Looking down, my eyes follow the ribbon of sandy wash as it flows towards Sleeping Ute Mountain off in the distance. The trail veers left and we carry ourselves up over a ridge into the next drainage. Several miles in, we come to a good spot on the trail to pull off and eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. 

We sit down in the sun and I see a vulture soaring overhead in big loops. I’m surprised. The vultures in the area fly south for the winter and I haven’t seen one for months. They’re soaring on updrafts one day in the fall and the next they’re gone until next spring. This is the first one I’ve seen this season. 

As it arcs through the sky, it lands perched on top of a tall sandstone wall. It looks like a tiny dot on top of the massive paint stains, huecos and cracks that time and water have etched into the stone.

I get out my paints and sketchbook to see if I can capture the scene of the first vulture of 2026. I’ll paint it on top of the sandstone wall. At first the scene looks simple—a wash of red, white and brown sandstone. The longer I look at it the more complicated it becomes. I start to see the horizontal compressed layers in the cliff band, the black patinas and the calcite clinging to the face. There are long paint strokes of black, red, dark brown, and yellowish tan. Huecos hide fallen rocks and raven nests. 

There are so many interesting details and I try to capture them. The vulture is long gone and it's getting late. We’ve been here for hours and the sun is getting lower. I wrap up my field painting, snap some reference stills and pack up. We start to jog back down the trail in the warmth.