What an honor it was to create this work for one of my favorite humans. Back in 2011, I went to visit Becca in her then-new home city of Denver after spending several years both living in Boston. That trip included a cloudless day of hiking in the Garden of the Gods National Park in Colorado Springs, interrupted by a pause on one of its many elevated rock formations to have lunch while looking out towards the snowcapped Pike’s Peak in the distance. It was as if the bright reddish-orange of the earth was accentuated against the vibrancy of the blue sky and vice versa. A separate journey on this visit found us driving the length of Boulder Canyon. Having never visited before, the ascent felt endless to me, which brought about a thrilling anxiety not unlike climbing the lift hill of a massive roller coaster – the towering peaks on either side of us adding to the grandeur of the climb.

 

This piece is a metaphor for paths – physical paths like the ones Becca and I traversed through the Garden of the Gods, like the path we ascended that (eventually) crests Boulder Canyon. It equally serves as a metaphor for the paths we take in life, like the ones that led Becca from the classrooms and laboratories of Harvard Medical School to orphanages in remote areas of China, Guatemala, and Zimbabwe where she provided palliative care. The paths that led her to Malawi and Argentina to provide pediatric services in underserved areas. The paths that led to her teaching medical students in Peru – that led to five years of pediatrics work in immigrant health back in Denver, and the paths that have led to a seat on the Board of Directors of the Colorado Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Becca, at 5’2”, stands as tall as Pike’s Peak with a heart as big as the azure sky above it, and a resolve as steadfast as the path that fights its way through and above Boulder Canyon.