The weather remains relentlessly dry, although today a few genuine clouds have formed — not enough for rain, never mind snow, but at least today they’re real. Yesterday’s “clouds” were almost entirely the product of contrails, save a few remnant traces of the lenticular bands that accompanied the dawn.
Now, the skies are a mix of cornflower blue and a snowy iridescent white, in roughly equal amounts. Below, the land is graying fast now, no relief in sight.
Of wind we have had plenty, though: capricious and entirely out of season. At the moment, it’s little more than an icy breeze, making the last few dead aspen leaves shiver. There will undoubtedly come a point later today when the wind turns full trickster, whipping itself into a dust devil and ripping across the surface of the bone-dry land, but in the meantime it will alter speed and direction repeatedly, until it has blown out all the cloud cover or blown in the smoke of prescribed burns.
On days like this, it’s hard to remember that the winds are also our friends — an essential part of an earth in balance, keepers of the directions who shelter us in their embrace.
But they are. And that role is underscored by the fact that so many Indigenous cultures and languages have specific names for the Four Winds of this world, and attribute specific powers and/or actions to them. The colonial world dismisses this worldview as “superstition” or “mythology,” and yet it is thoroughly grounded in science, for our peoples have always been dedicated to observing and understanding the world around us in concrete and analytical terms. We have always practiced science, in a way that is both deeply empirical and intensely practical.
And none of that negates the powers that accrue to elemental forces that are beyond human perception’s capacity to explain in ordinary terms.
Wings’s work travels this threshold between the worlds: at one end, starkly tangible and concrete; at the other, visionary interpretations of that which exists beyond the bounds of our ordinary perceptions but is no less real for that. Today’s featured work is one such example, a tribute to the Four Winds rendered in silver and stone, one the evokes all the mystical beauty of the medicine each carries. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Four Winds Cuff Bracelet
The Four Winds move and shape our world, within the storm and without. In this cuff, Wings honors their elemental power with this return to one of his own informal signature series and an old classic, traditional Native style of silverwork. It begins with a beautifully simple band of heavy, solid nine-gauge sterling silver, hammered by hand on both sides in the old way, with hundreds of strikes of a silversmith’s hammer, to create a spectacularly refractive surface. On the inner band, a long line of directional arrows traces the length of the center, some consecutive, others reversed, still others pointing outside their slender line, representing the wind’s own changes of direction, sometimes capricious, sometimes intentional. On the band’s surface, its sole adornment consists of four square bezel-set lapis lazuli cabochons set next to each other at the center, each stone lightly domed and the brilliant cobalt blue of deep waters and stormy skies, each represent one of the winds of the Four Sacred Directions. Ends and edges are all filed by hand, with each end rounded and smoothed, also by hand, for comfort. The band is 6″ long and 6/16″ across; each lapis cabochon is 6/16″ square (dimensions approximate). Side views and a view of the inner band shown below.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$1,675 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The hammered band is its own kind of tribute to the power of the winds, the way it makes sunlit air and surface waters alike shimmer and flutter beneath its force. On the inner band, though, Wings has incorporated its directional properties by means of a single long line of arrows, paired: each faces its counterpart, pointing inward, reminding us that no matter the buffeting effects of weather and season, there is a center that shelters us all.
In some traditions, the concept of the Four Winds is assigned properties akin to those of the Four Directions, and sometimes they are represented by specific colors. Most of the time, those colors track those assigned to the directions via the motif known collectively as the “medicine wheel,” a symbol and concept which is mostly distinct from the earth-based medicine wheels of the Northern Plains peoples.
In that context, the colors assigned tend to be some combination of white, yellow, red, and black or blue. In this instance, Wings elected to keep all four stones, one for each directional wind, the brilliant blue of lapis lazuli — a match to the shades of air and atmosphere, storm and sky.
These are, perhaps, related lessons: that the winds, despite their differences in force and strength and direction, hold in common that sheltering aspect. Yes, they buffet our bodies and our spirits, even break the branches of the world around us. And yet, they also blow the rain and snow to us, regulate the ebb and flow of the tides, keep our earth orbiting on its axis.
It’s hard to keep it in mind when the wind lets loose its trickster aspect, wreaking anything from mild mischief to wanton destruction. But it’s an elemental force that keeps our world in balance. And that in turn keeps us safe, steady, strong . . . centered in the winds.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
