At long last, the weekend is here.
It’s far from my favorite day, serving, as it odes, as a marker of one of the greatest losses of my life. It’s a day for grief, which means that too much brilliant sun feels somehow like an insult to memory, but luckily, this day’s glare is less harsh than it has been recently.
There’s less smoke, too, although an outsider would’ve thought otherwise early this morning. A soft dove-gray blanket rested over the whole valley, peaks seeming to rise from behind its haze to the south. But this was no pall fro a prescribed bur; this was the seasonal inversion layer that we get throughout the colder days of fall and well into spring. It’s caused by the smoke from woodstoves and kiva fireplaces rising in the cold early hours, only to be pushed back down by the still, heavy air, On this day, it didn’t last long, and the occasional trickster winds have not brought any more distant plumes our way.
There is a not-insignificant amount of cloud cover, too: plenty of turquoise sky still visible on all sides, but with a heavy marbling of puffy gray-white. These are not the kind of clouds that hold any precipitation for us, at least, but they do mute the sun’s harsh glare, and on this day, it’s a salve for my spirit.
Fortunately, my day has been taken up with task after task after task, the kind of chores that eat up time as surely as they do other resources, and it’s kept my mind occupied. My other option for a day such as this is to focus on the medicine that I have been granted by virtue of living in this place: a landscape aflame; mountain shadows an radiant light; the knowledge that sacred waters flourish nearby, catching the color of the sky. And it is medicine, too, to now that winter is near, the current season fast becoming bare limbs in an early frost, autumn’s bones alive beneath fall’s blue.
Today’s featured work, one of Wings’s newest cuffs, is manifest in such forms and shapes and healing properties. It’s named for the divine aspects of the waters that give breath and life to the land here, but it also embodies light and sky, and all the beauty and power and medicine that remains with us daily through the falling of the leaves and the first snow, through the depths of winter’s coldest nights and the return of warmer winds. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Sacred Spring Cuff Bracelet
This is a land of holy waters, of great river and sacred lake, of sacred spring and the First Medicine in its most powerful forms. With this cuff, Wings pays tribute to the local watersheds and the hot springs arising from them, delivering healing medicine to those who seek their gifts. The band is wrought of solid sterling silver of a decently heavy gauge, just light enough to allow the wearer to adjust it with some ease. The entire outer surface is hammered by hand, then buffed to a high polish, evoking the appearance of local waters in the sunlight. The focal stone is a freeform cabochon of Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado, nearly half-moon in shape, manifest in the rich blues and greens of lake and river and hot spring, too, and finely webbed with the reds and golds of shoal and riverbank and local clay. It rests in a bezel wrought entirely by hand, each segment saw-cut individually, filed smooth, and shaped to the stone, the whole edged with a slender strand of twisted silver. Along each edge of the inner band, repeating lines of half-moon crescents echo the shape of the stone and the pull of the tides. Band is 6″ long by roughly 3/8″ wide; Bezel is 1-1/8″ long by 11/16″ high’ cabochon is 7/8″ long by 1/2″ high at the highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; natural Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado
$1,400 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this cuff — so simple, so spare, so seemingly perfect. It’s a design of pure elegance, but also one layered with meaning that would not be apparent to the ordinary observer.
In that, it holds secrets known only to its creator, its very self, and its wearer.
It begins with the silverwork, which of course was the first series of steps in its creation.
The band is a decently heavy gauge of sterling silver, thick enough to feel substantial, yet lightweight enough to seem to float upon the wrist. It’s easily adjusted, too, no small thing with a cuff.
And instead of any of the usual adornments, Wings took a much older approach: The entire upper surface of the band is hammered by hand. On silver, it creates pure magic, transforming a flat metallic surface into the waves of a fast-flowing river or tidal ripples on a sacred lake. Here, it could be either, given that the springs that give the piece its name manifest in both environments.
And there is stampwork on the band, although it serves as another secret; it forms the borders of the inner band, its presence known only to the wearer.
And, of course, what makes the hammered surface so perfect for this piece is the stone.
It reminds me of a tidal pool, except that ours is a landlocked geography here. What we do have is the occasional sacred spring that crops up alongside or between larger watersheds, and this seems the perfect embodiment of such a phenomenon. It’s the electric sky blue of deep waters, marbled and webbed with the coppery red-gold clay of the local earth, as though sandbars have formed in between the openings in the aquifer.
Letting the stone speak for itself, simply ringing it in the embrasure of a hand-wrought bezel and edging it with twisted silver, was an inspired choice onWings’s part.
Of course, our watersheds are not nearly so healthy now. Down at Abiquiu, a toxic algae bloom has once again overtaken the lake; up here, the Great River remains at record low levels, sandbars now not only fully formed in what should be the flow’s central depths, but teeming with dry grasses [and the occasional hungry goose in search of sustenance no longer in abundance]. Our own ditches remain dry; there is no water to bring down any longer. And still the colonial authorities permit invasion, expansion, exploitation, destruction.
It’s one of the reasons we are so eager for winter’s arrival now. Winter s nows recharge the aquifers in ways the rest of the year’s weather finds impossible. It’s what lays the groundwork for a healthy spring and summer, an eventual abundant harvest [or, these days, even a harvest at all]. Winter here is the true season of renewal and rebirth, but it comes at this season’s beckoning, autumn bones alive beneath fall’s blue.
Today, it seems almost possible.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
