Dawn broke this day across an utterly clear sky, not so much as s wisp of a cloud in evidence. Since then, we have watched a few low lenticular clouds come and go behind the northeast peaks, and webs of drought-enhancing contrails crisscross the sky on all sides.
The sun is bright, the wind still mercifully low, and there is not the faintest hint of a snowflake in sight.
While the outside world is caught in the frenzy of commercialized Christmas, consumed with shopping and shipping and schedules and more, the natural world that sustains is suffering, both active harm and malign neglect. A glance at the mountains outside the window shows a sobering sight: whole stands of trees bare not because of seasonal leaf fall but because of the ravages of drought, infection, bark beetle infestation; giant patched of bare brown earth showing where only a few short years ago their evergreen blanket would have covered them entirely; and, of course, only the smallest patches of snow remaining, remnants widely scattered, stretched until they begin to disappear before our very eyes.
What’s needed now is an offering for earth and sky, a ceremony for a wintry world, and a prayer for the peaks and the waters of winter, the latter what carries the former’s lifeblood and breath.
We offer our own prayers daily, whether formally, with tobacco and feathers and smoke, or in those moments stolen amid the busy-ness and business of daily life, muttered under our breath or spoken aloud. However made, they are a part of every day, and always offered with a plea that we may all be allowed the chance to heal this world, to reclaim and rehabilitate and renew it for future generations.
Today’s featured work embodies this act, and this prayer, in powerful form. It’s a pin wrought in Wings’s signature style, coaxed into the form and shape and spirt of Eagle’s own feather, that which the great raptor grants us leave to use in prayer and ceremony. This one is anchored by a small but brilliant oval of banded malachite, highly domed like the mountains it represents, in the evergreen shades of these breathtakingly beautiful lands. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
A Prayer For the Peaks Eagle Feather Pin
Eagle lends us his feathers for healing and ceremony, to offer a prayer for the peaks, for the earth, for the water and sky. With this pin wrought using multiple traditional silversmithing techniques, Wings honors Eagle’s gift and the ways in which we put its power to work. The pin is saw-cut entirely freehand out of twenty-gauge sterling silver, from the top of the shaft to the rounded point of the tip, and all the spaces separating the barbs in between. The barbs themselves are etched by hand, scores, perhaps hundreds of individual lines scribed upon the surface of the pin, angled downward on either side of the center. The shaft, an overlay of sterling silver braided wire, stands out in sharply textured relief, its end wrapped traditionally using a strand of fine-gauge twisted silver coiled around it nine times. At the very top, an oval cabochon of forest-green malachite rests in a saw-toothed bezel, its bands at once delicate and bold like the local alpine ridgelines and fragile ecosystems that they represent. Pin is 3-3/4″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point; the wire overlay that forms the shaft is 1/8″ wide; the malachite cabochon is 1/2″ high by 3/8″ across (all dimensions approximate). Reverse with overlay-wrap shaft shown below and at the link.
Sterling silver; malachite
$925 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is a work that is once subtle and spectacular, spare and elegant. It’s simply the latest iteration in Wings’s long-running signature series of works wrought in the shape of Eagle’s sacred feather, a series that over the years has included cuff bracelets, necklaces, pendants, earrings, one barrette, and now, a pin. It’s one of those designs that perhaps seems easy; fashion jewelry is, after all, rife with mass-produced knockoffs. But this is wrought entirely by hand: sterling silver of a relatively heavy gauge, solid and sturdy, saw-cut freehand to delineate the sections of barbs, as is common with natural feathers. Indeed, each individual barb is articulated here, all etched individually on the front, literally hundreds of separate lines all inscribed by hand.
There are two separate overlays here: the shaft, formed of a length of sterling silver braid wire, cut to length and shaped to match the feather’s ends, then soldered securely into place down the very center; and the “beadwork” wrap at the end of the shaft, he formed by sterling silver bead wire hand-wrapped in one long, continuous spiral, then soldered carefully into place as a wraparound overlay. It’s a nod to the way that our peoples honor and adorn prayer feathers, wrapping the ends in elaborate beadwork patterns designed to illustrate our reverence for, and high valuation of, both the feather and its purposes.
And then there is the stone. It’s a very simple one, not particularly costly as malachite goes, one of only a couple of highly-domed ovals that had been in Wings’s collection for year, perhaps decades. A lot of the calibrated malachite on the market these days is relatively muted in color, not especially bright or deep in hue. This cabochon? This one is positively electric, as though this season’s magical light has trained its gaze directly upon the stands of conifers on the highest peaks.
And it naturally draws our eyes to those heights, to what lives upon them, and helps to sustain our own lives here at their feet.
Caught as we are in the death grip of such drought conditions, it’s hard sometimes to remember that those conditions have not yet managed to capture and destroy everything in their path. We can halt it still — stop it in its tracks, prevent progression, even return much of our small world here to its far healthier state of a few years past.
But we need the help of the outside world to do that, and we know that it will not be forthcoming.
Still, despair is not granted to us, nor is apathy, nor is nihilism. As resilient as these lands are, and even their waters, so lacking now in depth, they need our resilience for their own survival, and for ours. In these frenzied and frenetic days ner year’s end, it’s time to spare a prayer for the peaks and the waters of winter, and for the year to come.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
