February 2nd, and it’s fifty-six degrees. the snow is melting rapidly now. water dripping from every eave and the earth underfoot fast turning to mud. Later this week, the mercury is supposed to rise to just shy of sixty, which means that it will exceed it: Official forecasts here are invariably too conservative in either direction, predicting warmth that in truth gets far warmer, and levels of cold that are nowhere the depths we actually reach.

Part of it, of course, is that in this small spot where we live, in a slight hollow that nevertheless sits above an adjacent snow line, we have our own microclimate that tends to differ in small but still drastic ways from spots less than a tenth of a mile away in any direction.

And part of it is that they’re just simply always wrong, a truth that is apparently by design, since their own measures will inevitable shoot past their estimates, publicly recorded accordingly, and then a day later their official reporting will entirely erase their own actual highs and lows. That’s long been a problem here, but it’s become a daily occurrence, particularly in times of extreme weather or temperatures, and it’s impossible to note it without feeling as though it’s part of official concerted efforts to downplay the reality of climate collapse.

Of course, now all references even to the minimalist and wholly inadequate “climate change” are being systematically scrubbed from all government [and government-funded] publications, online or not, and we are entering a whole new world of propaganda and deliberate disinformation disseminates explicitly in the service of fascism and genocide.

Hope is hard to find these days, particularly when those elected [and therefore paid with our tax dollars] specifically to do the work of preventing and opposing such evils hold us in such clear contempt that they cannot be bothered to lift a finger now.

But we no longer look to any forms of colonial authority or control for hope. It was our mistake ever to do so in the first place.

No, hope does not reside in such places never mind people. Hope is to be found in the places that have always survived, and even, against all odds, continued to thrive: the natural world that gives us life and breath and shelter; the strength and wisdom of our ancestors; the knowledge that half a millennium of sustained campaigns of genocide have failed more than they have succeeded, and that we are still here. And no small part of that has to do with our worldviews and ways of being that define our engagement with the natural world, one not of proprietary exploitation and destruction but of familial and communal relation and reciprocal care.

And there is perhaps no season that reminds us more of those relationships than winter.

That’s true even now, when a twelve-hundred-year-drought, growing soil aridification and the die-off of too many indigenous plant life species, and a climate already in the throes of collapse routinely delivers days such as this, days that are anything but wintry. It’s been a blessing beyond description, these last four days, to see real snow upon the ground, but highs already near sixty mean that even the several inches still visible here will be gone very soon. Still, the unexpected gift means that this rich but wounded earth will be granted at least some small amount of healing now.

In this place, snow is wildlands medicine, a healing gift for a slumbering ground.

Today’s featured work, one of Wings’s newer cuffs, embodies these places and spaces, and the healing properties they attract and hold year-round. It’s set with an extraordinary stone, one manifest in what looks exactly like the landscape of nearby high-desert cliffs and crags beneath a stormy sky. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:

Wildlands Medicine Cuff Bracelet

Desert life is full of wildlands medicine, of healing beauty and abundance. With this cuff, Wings pays tribute to those wildlands, the desert backcountry where such gifts thrive, often unseen, and to the spirits that share their habitat. The band is formed of heavy 16-gauge sterling silver, solid and substantial without weighing down the wearer’s wrist unduly. Wings has scored two deep lines from end to end, forming borders along either edge and an extraordinary positive/negative pattern in between them. Between line and edge on either side is a repeating pattern of old-style feather-fan motifs, linked by tiny flowering-medicine symbols: tributes at once to Eagle, who shares the sere landscape and soars above it, and to that which grows and thrives upon the earth below. In between the scored lines, Wings has chased two rows of stylized arrow points, each row facing the other and producing a repeating negative-space pattern in linked diamond shapes, evoking the power of the Eye of Spirit. Long, sweeping radiant arcs trace the edges of the inner band, embossed, as with the rest of the stampwork, entirely freehand. The focal is formed of an extraordinary oblong cabochon of landscape jasper, manifest in the shapes and shades of desert mesas and slopes beneath a gathering storm, the stone arrayed on the vertical and set into a scalloped bezel edged with twisted silver. Band is 6″ long by just over 1″ wide; bezel is 2-18″ high by 1-1/8″ wide; cabochon is 1-7/8″ high by just over 15/16″ wide (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.

Sterling silver; landscape jasper
$1,600 + shipping, handling, and insurance

I love the silver work on this one, two borders scored freehand, the spaces filled with equally freehand stampwork animated with an Indigenous Art Deco spirit of a century and more ago. Arrow points, eagle-feather fans, flowering medicine: combine to create patterns that honor great power in multiple natural forms, power that is as ancient as these lands and waters and the sky above us.

It’s deep silverwork, too. This band is ever so slightly lighter in weight that a few in current inventory of similar width — a counterbalance to the incredible size and attendant wright of the focal stone.  But it’s still extremely solid and of sufficient weight, a work of substance i silver, stone, and spirit too.

Landscape jasper, one of the variants of the umbrella mineral group known as picture jasper, is something spectacular in its own right. It manifests entirely naturally in patterns like those exhibited here: what looks for all the world like a desert landscape, rich brown earth like sandstone cliffs, usually beneath the rich stormy grays of the desert land’s monsoonal sky.

This one is no exception. Of course, the stormy skies could just as easily be those of winter, heavy with snow rather than rain, and in truth? Wednesday afternoon, the skies here looked much the same, roiling shades of pewter and lead and iron aswirl above an earth brown with dormancy and faded pale gold in the winter light.

And in this now-vanishingly rare instance, such skies delivered, and such an earth welcomed their medicine. It was indeed a healing gift for a slumbering earth, one very desperately needed for its survival.

These temperatures, more properly belonging to early May than to the opening days of February, may mean that the ground here is awakening early. At least now it has a chance to thrive . . . but it will require help form us all for the rest of the year and beyond, as well.

~ Aji

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.