Grand Valley Audubon Society Presents: Before Words there were Birds

(Free to Audubon Members, $10 for non-members)

In the Mulberry Room, Grand Junction Recreation Center

Before we named the rivers or drew boundaries across the land, there were birds. They were among our first musicians, our first messengers, and perhaps our first poets.

The evening takes its inspiration from ravens and crows, owls and hawks, songbirds and migrating flocks—and from the ancient human impulse to listen closely to the more-than-human world. Poems and stories will mingle with breath, rhythm, flute song, humor, silence, and the elemental heartbeat of the drum.

Join us for an evening that is lively, flighty, earthy, and unexpected—a celebration of birds not simply as objects of observation, but as neighbors, teachers, fellow travelers, and wild presences that have accompanied human beings since before memory.

Book Signing Afterwards.

Wendy Videlock lives on the edge of a ravine in Western Colorado. Her critically acclaimed work appears widely, most notably in O Magazine, The New York Times, Dark Horse, Poetry Magazine, Best American Poetry, Hudson Review and Rattle. Her syndicated newspaper column, The Barefoot Laureat/Word from the West appears in news outlets and magazines across the four corner states. Her books are available where books are sold. Her newest book is Desert Kin: Speaking Animal in the American Southwest: Essays and Poems (Lithic Press). Find out more HERE.

Daiva Chesonis was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and now lives off-grid in southwest Colorado. She has a B.A. in Russian Studies and an M.A. in Diplomacy & International Conflict Resolution. She moved to Telluride in 1992 as part of the team that built the Gondola transportation system. She stayed and became a snowboard instructor, Art Director at Telluride Magazine, and a traveling minstrel for Mountainfilm on Tour before becoming co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore, where she co-founded the Telluride Literary Arts Festival. From 2019-21 she was San Miguel County Poet Laureate. In the fall of 2025, she and her husband Craig Childs were Writers in Residence at the Hemingway House in Ketchum, Idaho. Her poems—in translation or written in her first language—appeared in the 2025 and 2026 Anthologies of Lithuanian American Poetry. Her first book of poetry is set to publish sometime this century.

Well into adulthood and despite decades of fighting it, Ellen Metrick began to accept that she was a relatively self-sufficient jane-of-many-trades. She has taught school, run rivers for a living, made and shoveled snow, lived in her truck and a tipi, built a straw bale home with her late husband and raised a lovely, thoughtful and creative human being. She's tried to fix her lawnmower. Poetry has been her lifeblood since before she can remember. Ellen has two published books of poetry: Poetisattva (2000) and Teasing out the Divine (2012). She dabbles in creative nonfiction, writes for local newspapers and magazines and is in love. Life is good for Ellen. Except for that lawnmower.