Another day dawns cold and mostly clear, but the giant shelf cloud rising up from behind the peaks is the weather’s tell. The long-range forecast is predicting intermittent snows from Thursday through the following Monday or so, and change is already upon the wind.
It’s a change desperately needed. No amount of snow this season will be enough to reverse the effects of the drought, and we are already well below our formerly “normal” mark for annual snowfall. There is plenty of snowfall of the other sort, though: It has been so warm that the mountainous backcountry has been under formal avalanche warnings for a week or more, and such conditions will be with us for months yet.
Avalanches are not unusual here; it’s simply Mother Earth righting herself in a land of extremes. But they are far more frequent now, and that makes them far more deadly. Still, people ignore the warnings and push their luck (and the luck of innocents into the bargain). If this last year should have taught us anything, it’s that our whole world needs desperately to brought back into balance now.
This lack of balance means that, despite the bitter cold of recent days, these days mostly no longer qualify as winter. Spring is already here, although both seasons will likely contend for primacy for another three months yet. But it has thrust us solidly into the hardest, harshest season of the year.
This year, that will prove risky indeed for us all.
Ours is a world in need of balance, yes, of healing, too, which makes it a world in need, first and foremost, of medicine. There is medicine of the more commonly understood sort, the sort that heals ordinary sicknesses and injuries to the body; but there is also Medicine, the sort that heals the deeper, less easily treated wounds of the spirit. This is as true of the Earth’s spirit as it is of our own, and while she continues to offer us Medicine for our healing, we need to do the same for her now.
Fortunately, we are entering a season that makes both sorts available. We are already well into winter’s renewal and rebirth; growth will follow soon, as will our own obligations of care and cultivation. If water is the First Medicine, flowing from the sky and across the surface of the land, the rest emerges from the heart of the earth, flowering in the warmth and light.
It’s a phenomenon, a place and space and gift alike that finds expression in today’s featured work, one this week’s short season of hearts and for the longer focus on all things green to come. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is too soon yet for Dragonfly to put in an appearance; too soon, too, for Butterfly. But both will be here before many more weeks have passed . . . if the Earth is healthy, if the First Medicine flows through her veins.
We are entering that week ostensibly devoted to love. But true love resides in care, in creating a place of harmony and a space for healing.
The work begins now, while winter remains: a season for medicine to flow, for Earth to flower and grow.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
