The snow began an hour or so before midnight, and for a moment it looked as though it might deliver real accumulations. But we awakened again this morning to only the barest rime, not even enough to cover surfaces solidly. This morning has presented us with a mix of clouds and sun simultaneously, all new snow already melted, but the craggy faces and evergreen slopes of The Dragon’s Tail are dusted with white now.
The earth is alive with wild birds now, the cycle of snow/melt/warmth exposing seeds and summoning small creatures from below the surface. Father Sun is mostly robed in gray as he makes his journey across the southern sky, but for a time this morning he gave us the gift of one sunlit cedar standing strong next to its brother: amber glow and silver light emergent from lazuli clouds to fall upon jade boughs lush and rich with winter’s gifts. The clouds hold sway now, cloaking the tops of the peaks and moving in low above the land, a storm for the spirits of the midwinter silence. The forecast predicts more snow, in small amounts, from now through month’s end.
Perhaps we shall get it.
Today’s featured work embodies these same spirits, strong and silent and yet full of animated life now: the cedars that shelter the winter birds, whose violet berries feed them, whose older brothers have sheltered our land and warmed our home. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
Sunlit Cedar Tree Pin
A sunlit cedar welcomes the winter light. Wings pays tribute to sun and season, tree and earth on which it stands, with this little pin cut freehand from sterling silver. The flared and scalloped trunk stands sturdy and firm, while the tips of the branches reach upward slightly, as though to meet the sun. The orb’s rays, peeking out faintly from beneath snowclouds, garland the boughs, while the small flowery tips of the cones, hand-stamped, spangle the surface. At the middle, the evergreen’s rich hues show themselves by way of bezel-set cabochons of lapis and jade, while a fiery amber sun rests near the top. Tree stands 1-1/2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber; lapis lazuli; jade
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is my current favorite of the available works in this, one of Wings’s oldest signature series of evergreen pins. They are especially popular at the winter holidays, when folks wear them as miniature Christmas trees. But as our current grouping makes clear, “decoration” is the exclusive province neither of Christmas nor of human activity; here, the evergreen adorn themselves naturally with glowing cones and brilliant berries, aided in winter by the spirits of ice and snow, storm and sun.
And they remind that however still winter might seem, however hunkered down in hibernation, that sense of sleep is illusory: In reality, this is the season of renewal and rebirth, and the evergreen spirits like those of the aspens and the winter birds, are fully animated now and hard at work midwifing this new world into being, nurturing it and ensuring that it both survives and thrives throughout the seasons to come.
They are aided now by the weather, more important than ever to a land still caught in the deadly grip of drought. For now, at least, we have a storm for the spirits of the midwinter silence, and for the hum of birth and life ongoing beneath the quiet.
~ Aji
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