Just after dawn, and the sun is rising high in the sky behind a low band of clouds. oN the peaks, snow is falling once again, and the forecasts suggest that it will fall here before long, too.
It’s not quite snow in summer, but given that Indian summer temperatures of eighty degrees were here at week’s end, it’s not far off it. But this is all winter: a mercury well below the freezing mark, a wind chill of twelve, and in the fields, twenty-one inches of snow on the ground.
We had a little melt yesterday, in those intermittent moments when the sun shone bright and [relatively] warm. But the wind whispered more of January than October, and we know to expect more of the same today. October snows are far from unknown here — indeed, they used to be an annual event — but this bitter cold was not a part of them.
Such are the vagaries of climate change, but such, too, are the caprices of the trickster spirits of this season.
And so we look out today upon a world of chaotic contrasts: of gold aspen leaves burned black in a day by the bitter cold, of other leaves every shade from amber to coral to copper to crimson to bronze . . . of some branches still dressed fully in green even as the leaves themselves are spangled with snow. In a land where hail in summer is a norm, ice layered upon lush green, these last few days still seem particularly extreme.
And so the world outside our window, buried as it is under near two feet of snow, calls to mind one of Wings’s works from and for the summer — less about its warmth than it is about the diametrically opposed elements. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Hail In Summer Cuff Bracelet
One of the gifts of the rainy season is hail in summer, a bit of snowy white to grace the green of a heated earth. Wings brings together the green and the white and heat, too, with this slender cuff bracelet studded with gems of summer and winter. The slender band is stamped free-hand in a repeating pattern of directional symbols down the very center, spokes pointing to all of the Sacred Directions like a radiant star, or the crystalline structure of a snowflake. Each side of the band is edged in a separate repeating pattern of triangular motifs, a symbol used at once to represent the mountains and the shelter of the traditional lodge, radiant with light at the base. The ends of the band are rounded by hand and filed smooth, each stamped in a single radiant sunrise image. Along the center, five gems are set into scalloped bezels and backed with sterling silver, the layer then overlaid across the band itself — a cascade of three round cabochons of grass-green jade alternating with a pair of domed oval cabochons of snowflake obsidian, icy white patches adorning the glassy black molten material. The band measures 6″ in length by 1/4″ across; jade cabochons are 3/8″ across; snowflake obsidian cabochons are 1/2″ long by 3/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; jade; snowflake obsidian
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a stunningly beautiful piece, one that evokes the elemental powers of the winds and the sacred directions even as it reminds us of the chaos and caprice that accompany their force.
Humanity, in its seemingly infinite hubris, tends to forget this truth, but we live in a world wrapped in the power of the elemental spirits. Sometimes we need a reminder. In the season of the trickster spirits, they have decided to make sure that we remember.
~ Aji
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