The forecast for today is for rain.
It seemed unlikely in the extreme, the morning skies a brilliant blue with only a few fluffy patches of white to mar its otherwise-clear surface. But now, at midday, those fluffy patches have begun to grow and stretch, to coalesce and collaborate and conspire to dim the silver sunlight and turn parts of the sky a darkening gray.
We knew it was still possible. After all, the dawn skies were fiery — if not precisely red, then at least a blend of amber and coral, a sunrise dressed more for October than for August’s end. The dawn has turned out to be only the first of the reds of this day, too: Wings has been gathering ripened fruit from the wild patch by the giant blue spruce, and has just brought in a shell full of raspberries and rose hips, tangy and sweet.
These, and the pears now weighting down the two small fruit trees, are all the harvest we shall be granted this year, courtesy of climate change and drought, and we are grateful to have that much. It occurs to me that most people, including so-called “environmental activists,” seem to understand the phrase “climate change” as an abstraction only, an umbrella term in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense. Yes, they think of it as spawning the superstorms and catastrophic wildfires we see everywhere now: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, drought; glacier melt and sea rise, yes, those too. But what almost no one seems to have internalized is that the phrase is dangerously, desperately literal in meaning: Our literal climate has changed, is changing still, and without a full commitment to the work of reclamation and restoration, it will soon reach a point at which those changes cannot be undone.
We’ve been seeing it here for several years, and this year brought it home like no other. With some early rains in spring and the opening weeks of summer, we had high hopes for a real monsoon season, and thus, an actual planting season for the first time in four or five years.
Our hopes were misplaced.
Why? It wasn’t the lack of early rain. It was the deeper change in average temperature.
This is a place where winter is long and hard; what other regions regard as “cold” can last six months here in an ordinary year. These are no ordinary years. One of the side effects of this deadly deepening drought has been to extend the cold dry weeks substantially. Where once we routinely planted our gardens beginning in the third week of May, now it’s often still too cold by the third week of June. The temperature swings at the bookends of summer are wilder than before, and it’s no longer rare to have multiple hard freezes in what was once our hottest month of the year. Meanwhile, the leaves begin turning in June, before the green is fully formed, and so we have, at best, only days of “summer” as we once knew it. The growing season has telescoped radically inward, shrinking not merely summer itself, but all the possibilities it has always held for survival.
This is “climate change,” writ hard and deep, up close and terrifyingly personal now.
In the absence of crops and gardens, we have now begun to turn our attention to what may be planted for fall. Autumn is already here , of course, never mind the highs that pass ninety; the nights are cold and the wind wields a scalpel’s edge daily now. But there are some some foods and flowers and medicines that thrive with late planting, that use the winter months to root themselves deeply in the earth, ready to grow when the light lengthens once more.
As a metaphor, it’s not far off how our peoples born of cold climes have always handled winter.
Less metaphorically, it’s a concept distilled into miniature but magnificently tangible form on today’s featured work, one of Wings’ newest newest cuffs and one of my own personal favorites. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Roots of Medicine Cuff Bracelet
The roots of medicine are all around us: in the earth beneath our feet, in the sky overhead, in the air and fire, wind and light. With this vintage-style cuff, Wings calls the roots from all directions to inspire us to create the medicine our world needs now. The work is wrought from a strand of heavy nine-gauge sterling silver triangle wire, scored freehand to create two narrow borders on either side of the apex. Within those lines, its length is chased with an alternating pattern of flowering symbols and radiant motifs on each side. Each lower border is also scored freehand with scores of minute straight lines across its length; so, too, is each upper border and the apex itself, for hundreds of strikes of the jeweler’s hammer to create its radiant old-stye texture. The ends are hammered by hand and hand-filed smooth, as is the inner band, for a comfortably smooth finish, while the outer surface is heavily oxidized and buffed to a rich, aged Florentine glow. A single flowering medicine plant, etched freehand, adorns one flared end. The band is 6″ long by 3/8″ across; the cuff stands 5/16″ high from edge to apex; the hammered ends flare to 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver
$1,300 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the solidity, the symbolic and literal substance of this band; love, too, the richly aged Florentine finish and the Art Deco-like design scored and stamped so deeply in it. I love the little secrets it holds, like the single hand-etched medicine plant on one end, dancing in free and joyous abandon, in stark contrast to the even flowering radiance of the stampwork that traces both sides of the apex dow its full length.
I also love the extraordinary attention to detail, to the tight, deep, even scorework and stamping, all wrought freehand, deeply oxidized and thrown into starkly beautiful relief against silver so pale and textured it’s nearly white.
But eve more than that, I love the deeper meaning of its symbolism — meaning that inspires our actions now. Yes, it is true that the roots of medicine are all around us, but we have a duty to plant medicine, too: by the way we live our lives, yes; but now, in these dangerous times when Mother Earth herself is so badly wounded, in the literal, physical sense, as well.
It’s time to let go of fruitless hopes for a summer that could not be, and instead focus our work on what we can conspire with fall to create. It’s time to plant — medicine in the earth and in our spirits, too, deeply rooted, radiant, and ready to grow.
~ 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.
