We awakened this morning to find that our small world was visited by all the spirits of the dawn. A silver sun filtered through monsoonal towers and trailing bands of lower clouds, creating a fantastic iridescence more usually the province of winter skies.
And yet, the day is warm; the winds have not yet risen, and the air seems fully infused with the sounds and scents of spring.
And spring is, t long last, officially here: I heard the meadowlark’s song late yesterday for the first time this year, only briefly, but enough to be sure of its arrival. Now, there is an unseasonal rainstorm looming low and close, and if it actually delivers, perhaps there will be some traction in the firefighting efforts to the east of us.
It will not recover what has already burned, now pushing 150,000 acres just from these particular blazes. But it may save part of that which currently lies in the path of the flames.
Meanwhile, the shift into spring is picking up speed here. We have had had several firsts in recent days, and near-firsts: the return of the towhee and the nuthatch; a single early hummingbird; the budding of the red willows; the first leaves on the other willows, the first alpine dandelions. Yesterday delivered the first dandelion blown into a puffball; the first leaves on the birch; the first leaves on the red willows that lend place and people their name; first mourning dove and, as noted above, meadowlark too. I hung the hummingbird feeder two days ago, and the tiny solitary spirit discovered it this morning. The land is greening now, trees too, and even the mountains have brightened the color of their slopes, fitting for these timeless beings that have always sat their watch here — an eternal evergreen at the heart of the light.
Today’s featured work is manifest, in miniature and similarly timeless form, as the mountains, the heart, and the light. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Aurora’s Heart Necklace
Some call Aurora the Roman goddess of the dawn; others have given her name to the phenomenon that marks the northern skies, those of the shadow spirits and the lights that dance in the night. Wings has found Aurora’s heart and placed it at the center of this extraordinary necklace, built around a lapidary masterpiece in the form of chatoyant malachite. The heart-shaped focal cabochon, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, hangs from a small, elegantly flared bail stamped freehand in a pattern that evokes the feathers of Eagle, or of the Thunderbird itself. Around the central heart, set into a single organic, unitary bezel scalloped freehand around each tiny accent stone, are arrayed a dazzling twenty-five ultra-high-grade gemstone cabochons: a single sunny citrine at the throat, at the center of a randomly ordered heart-shaped hoop of iolite, opal, Labradorite, and rainbow moonstone, six of each translucent stone placed to catch and refract a rainbow of light. The pendant hangs from a strand of ultra-high-grade gemstone beads in boreal and light-infused shades: chatoyant kyanite around faceted citrine; tiny malachite cubes bisected by sterling silver rounds accenting gradients of more kyanite and gray moonstone, rainbow moonstone, and selenite; and anchors of tiny black moonstone rounds, the color of night, ending in the diamond-cut sterling silver of shimmering stars. Full pendant, including bail, hangs 2-1/2″long by 2-1/4″ across at the widest point; bail itself is 3/4″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point; heart cabochon is 1-3/8″ long by 1-5/8″ across at the widest point; accent cabochons are each 1/8″ across; bead strand is 21″ long, excluding findings (all dimensions approximate). Full view shown below.
Pendant: Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade chatoyant malachite; citrine;
iolite; opal; Labradorite; rainbow moonstone
Bead Strand: Kyanite; faceted citrine; malachite; sterling silver; gray moonstone;
rainbow moonstone; selenite; black moonstone; diamond-cut sterling silver
$2,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Chatoyant malachite is fibrous, with slender needle-like bands running through the larger, more ordinary agate-like banding in the stone. It’s a material that takes well to a high polish, and thereby refracts light in ways that ordinary malachite doesn’t.
And this specimen seems to have formed in tribute to the mountains and the clouds at the very heart of the light of this place.
It’s an extraordinary example of fine silverwork, manifest in the shades and shimmer of an alpine dawn — one, like this day’s, infused with the storm’s light, hauntingly iridescent, filled with mystery and magic and medicine too.
As I look out the window and see the clouds enfolding the peaks now, the radiance of a silver sun filtering through around the edges, I am reminded of the gift these peaks represent, and of the need to protect them now: an eternal evergreen at the heart of the light, protectors of place and sacred earth in their own right.
This is a hard spring already. We have work to do.
~ Aji
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