The forecast insists that there is a fifteen-percent chance of rain today. We can only hope that it materializes into something real.
Yesterday evening, a fire erupted at one of the colonial homes at the base of El Salto, the craggy mountainous cliff face in photos that I post here semi-routinely. Are firefighters were able to extinguish it almost immediately, and for that we are profoundly grateful; our worry now is any remaining hot spots.
Because this fire? Was close enough to spread to us. And as we know from the Calf Canyon portion of the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Wildfire Complex, still burning two months later over the southern ridgeline, a fire that has been put out is not necessarily “out.” That fire ignited courtesy of an improperly-extinguished prescribed burn from January. As Wings has pointed out over and over again, putting it “out” on the spot is never enough. You have to check it repeatedly, because the soil holds in the heat, and this is a twelve-hundred-year drought, with conditions utterly unprecedented for anyone alive today. This kind of aridity, with literal scorched earth resulting, is not susceptible to ordinary efforts.
It’s a frightening time here.
At the moment, the air is hot, the sun bright; the breeze is relatively light. Puffs of white trail all around the horizon, a few of them linking up with each other to create larger formations. Thus far, they have not managed to scale themselves into thunderheads, but perhaps the afternoon will bring more productive activity to our skies.
We can only hope. The grass is turning yellow; the fields, brown. More of the trees are dying now, and we have a dearth of anything resembling flowers, wild or otherwise, at this point. Even the two scarlet honeysuckle bushes are each half-dead now, so we must be grateful for the half of each that remains. Together they produce, if not a rain, at least a shower of red blossoms like tiny flutes gathered together, their song a mild sweet scent.
Today’s featured work, while far bigger and bolder than a honeysuckle flower, nevertheless holds a bit of their same song and spirit in its silver and stone. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Red Flower Rain Cuff Bracelet
A monumental cabochon of red flower jasper serves as the focal point of this magnificent unisex cuff. The stone, a warm, earthy rose shade with a mulberry and charcoal matrix of dendritic wildflower blossoms, is set into an elevated scalloped bezel, trimmed with twisted silver, and accented with a tiny chatoyant tiger’s eye cabochon at one side. The cuff, wide and weighty, features a hand-stamped row of matched thunderhead symbols chased along the center of the band, flanked at either edge by a single row of thunderheads. The band itself tapers slightly at either end for a comfortable fit. In the inner band, morning stars and other celestial symbols are scattered like constellations tossed across the pre-dawn sky. Band is 1-11/16″ across, narrowing to 1-3/8″ at either end; the bezel is slightly wider, 1-7/8″ long by 1.25″ wide; the visible portion of the stone is 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ wide (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; red flower jasper
$1,550 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s been a while since we’ve featured this cuff, but it deserves plenty of time in the light. It’s an old-style piece, wide of band and large of stone, with a repeating minimalist motif on the band that utilizes only a single stamp: a traditional thunderhead symbol, open bases traced down either edge, with two rows conjoining them at the center to create a sheltering space whose boundaries point to the cardinal and ordinal directions.
It’s powerful symbolism, the sort that seems to hold its own capacity for summoning medicine — in this instance, the rain.
Perhaps it does. While I’ve been writing, the clouds drifting over the southwestern peaks have begun to coalesce and climb. They can properly be called thunderheads already, and it appears that the trailing bands of white elsewhere in the sky are making the effort to follow suit.
What we need most are several days of slow, soft, steady rain. That is not the pattern here, and not likely to become so now. But even a few short storms, like the shower of red blossoms falling from the honeysuckle vines, would be medicine now.
So would the added safety, proof against sudden flames.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
