It’s an unusual October.
It rained last night — a good, solid storm, a hard, soaking rain in the middle of the night. Rain at all is rare this time of year. Oh, we may get a snowstorm toward the end of the month, but rain? No.
It’s probably nothing to be happy about over the long term, since it’s probably yet one more manifestation of climate change, but the last few weeks have been exceptionally beautiful: clouds, fog, humidity, rains from the occasional sprinkle to the full-blown storm. The weather pattern have given us spectacular sunrises and sunsets, more so than what we usually see this time of year.
In autumn and winter, dawn is always magical. I love being up while the sky is still black and crystal-clear, the Morning Star still a bright guide for those who must travel before Father Sun awakens. The air is pure this time of year, so clear it almost — not quite, but almost — hurts to breathe. It makes you fully conscious of the blessing of simply being alive. To be able to watch as Father Sun rises slowly from his blankets of night to peer over Pueblo Peak, and then to rise and return to us as we go about our day . . . there’s a reason for morning prayers.
Normally, this time of year, day dawns delicately pink and gold, more a softly-hued brilliance of light than anything clearly visible. It was the inspiration for the version of the Pueblo pin shown above, one of Wings’s signature series, this time, with an accent to the color of the sunrise.
Because in fall and winter, the sunrise most often looks like this:
The ancient walls awash in morning light, turning the old golden adobe softly pink against the green of the stands of piñon on the mountainside, the vigas and pine ladders turned to delicate strands of silver. Even on days when the sun must break through cloud cover, when snow blankets the slopes behind the village, the colors remain constant and the light true:
It’s the color of rose quartz, the stone he chose for this particular rendering of the old village homes in silver. In some other traditions, it’s regarded as a stone of peacemaking, perhaps appropriate symbolism for the dawn, when we can begin anew. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
The soft hue of the dawn sky washes over the Pueblo by way of a tiny rose quartz cabochon. Hand-cut of sterling silver, the pin’s stampwork includes the traditional doors and windows, the pine vigas (support beams), and the iconic pine entry ladder.
Sterling silver; rose quartz
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We are entering half a year of such mornings now. But we’ve also been blessed lately with mornings awash in greater color, a broader range and deeper intensity of hues, thanks to the presence of the clouds that have usually vanished by now.
For someone like me, coming from a place where it’s cloudy as often as it’s sunny, someone who finds comfort in the clouds and the rain and the snow, it’s a welcome change, a gift.
And occasionally, the clouds stay still long enough for me to capture them for just a brief moment as they did last Saturday:
A sky of fire and flame, heralding Father Sun’s awakening as his glow precedes him over the peaks, above the arbor.
And still, the rose quartz sky appears, even in the fieriest of dawns . . . in the west:
The reflected glow manifesting in brush strokes across the heavens, Spirit’s own Impressionist painting, writ large on the canvas of the very sky itself.
Dawn as art.
~ Aji
