Last night was deadly for anyone abroad in it, deep darkness lit only by the cold fire of a moon not yet full, and the even colder flames of a thousand distant stars. The mercury plunged near zero, with wind chills well below it; we have been plagued, in recent winters, by a brutal north wind in the dark hours, no matter how the warm those of our limited daylight.
It’s a time for staying indoors by the fire, and of course we do, but we are also acutely aware that too many people locally have no such option. I learned this morning that two unhoused people had all of their gear stolen last night, and it was a nothing less than a miracle that they were able to find a space at the local shelter out of sub-zero temperatures, which is consistently over capacity now.
This is not the world Mother Earth envisioned for any of us.
We cannot go back in time to stop it, but we can learn from it and prevent its worsening going forward. Of course, that would take the whole planet to commit to it, and we know all too well that colonial cultures will never do such a thing — not, at any rate, until the decision is taken out of their hands by the very destruction they wreak. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t ameliorate and mitigate in our own much smaller ways.
A glance at the extended forecast shows temperatures still at least twenty degrees too warm in the daylight hours, and virtually zero chance of any kind of precipitation whatsoever. The latter is especially destructive to the land and waters, already caught in the death grip of a twelve-hundred-year drought. Wildfire risk increases now, as we can see from events this very day in southern California, and our local lands and watersheds have already suffered too much burning, whether literal flames or the more metaphorical burn scars of earth, air, and water warming and aridification.
We are fortunate, in that we have the historical records of our ancestors to guide us. We know what these lands, all across this land mass we know collectively as Turtle Island, are capable of being at their healthiest; we also know well that they have always modeled resilience for us, and for our nonhuman relatives, too. We are blessed by the gifts that come from from ancient fires, whether those of proper land stewardship and forest management, those of the old councils that ensured we would know our histories and our ways, or those of prophecy, that warned us of what would to come, leaving us readier to meet the challenges of this wounded world than those outside our traditions.
These are the First Medicines, granted by Creator and the elemental forces and cosmic spirits that animate and sustain our universe. And at no time throughout the year are they more important than at its end, when we are plunged into the depths of the cold and the dark, for our world survives by winter’s medicines, ancient earth, waters, fires, light.
Today’s featured work, truly a masterwork by any and every measure, embodies these medicines, these gifts of survival at all seasons. it’s a necklace wrought in a figurative shape, a spirit being distilled into wearable form, emergent from ancient fires and water and earth in its constituent parts. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From Ancient Fires Necklace
From ancient fires is our whole world born. With this extraordinary new necklace, Wings honors the fires, the gifts of the ancients, and the green of an Earth reborn. The pendant, cut freehand to follow the lines of the focal settings, is edged freehand in scalloped motifs that flow like water and dance like flame from Wings’s home-made stamps. At the top, an equally ancient Pueblo pottery sherd, bold geometric black on white in the old Pájarito style, evokes the head of a human-like figure; at the bottom, another pottery sherd from the same era, this one hand-painted in black lines on white clay, suggests a kirtle and sash or skirt; at center, a freeform dagger of fabulously lacy deep green malachite whorled with orbicular traces of lighter green marks the center of the body, suggesting a cycle of birth and rebirth from the surrounding clay and the flames that hold them all. A lightly flared bail, lined, edged, and cut freehand, holds the pendant securely. The strand is a cascade of like colors and textures, all beads hand-selected to pick up the shapes and shades of the pendant and its focals: a gradient of deep gray marbled Picasso jasper and pale gray cloud jasper rounds; coarsely textured barrels of basaltic lava rock and matte onyx rounds; doughnut-style rondels of sterling silver alteranting with orbs of high-grade malachite in bands and whorls of rich, deep emerald green. Bead strand is 20.5″ long, excluding findings; pendant including bail is 4-1/8″ long; pendant alone is 3-1/2″ long by 2-1/8″ across; bail is 3/4″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point; upper pottery sherd is 1-1/4″ high by 1″ across at the widest point; malachite cabochon is 1-3/8″ across by 1/2″ high; lower pottery sherd is 1-1/4″ high by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendant: Sterling silver; old black-on-white Pueblo pottery sherds; high-grade orbicular malachite
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
Beads: Picasso jasper; cloud jasper; basaltic lava rock; high-grade malachite; sterling silver; matte onyx
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is a truly extraordinary work, one that became a personal favorite from the moment of its creation. The pottery sherds, black-on-white fragments of ancient Puebloan artistry by Wings’s own ancestors, are part of his private collection, handed down through generations. They’ve been carefully preserved, so that their color and contrast remains remarkably stark and bright after all these centuries, perhaps millennia.
The malachite dagger at its center, electric green and manifest in wondrous orbicular patterns, is perfect as a traditional sash, suitable for the finest regalia for the most important of dances. The silverwork he kept spare and understated, using his hand-made flowing-water stamp as a guide for the flames of the figure’s internal fire, a reminder that what seems diametrically opposed is nonetheless required for a healthy whole.
And then there are the beads.
This work underwent a change in the bead strand less than a month after its initial creation. At first, he strung it with the same old malachite cubes that hold the pendant on yesterday’s featured work, an unusual shape and an old set of stones that seemed apt for the embodiment of a spirit as ancient as this. But they were too small, too diminutive in size and spirit both to hold a pendant of this nature. And so we traveled across town to the local bead vendors, where I found this spectacular strand of high-grade malachite orbs: deep, rich forest greens, the banding present but subtle beneath the intensity of the natural color, the feel and weight of them in my hands proof of their substance.
And they were the perfect companion to the cloud and Picasso jasper spheres that pick up the putty and charcoal shades of the ancient pottery sherds, of the basaltic lava rock and the matte onyx, too. These were big enough and bright enough to hang side by side with the sterling silver saucer beads and not be overwhelmed by their shine. All are gifts of the Earth herself, forged in water and fire and pressure and time on a geologic scale, and that, too, should remind us to take a long view of what surrounds us now.
This is a hard land, whatever the season: the gale-force trickster winds of spring; the high heat of summer and what were once monsoons now replaced by drought; the aridity and early cold of fall. But winter is the true season of renewal and rebirth, the winding down of one year and midwifing of a new one into being, and it is this season, its snowfall or lack thereof, that will make or break what follows.
And so if there is a time to tend to this place, to the soil and the waters and the plant life that turns light into breath, to the flames that can consume or heal, it is now. the land survives, and so do we, by winter’s medicines — ancient earth, waters, fires, light.
~ 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.
