It’s warmer today, and not quite as clear. There’s no haze here, but gaze southward and you’ll see the telltale shimmer of the light. Still, once the great turning begins, there’s no reversing it, and more gold has appeared overnight on peaks and slopes alike. Officially, fall does not begin until Thursday evening, but as our peoples have always known, earth and time and season have no regard for human attempts at compartmentalization. Fall has been with us for weeks already, and it seems to be racing through the landscape at a rapid clip now.
I have said many times that our small space of land is its own microclimate, its own microhabitat, and current developments only reinforce that. In this area (we’re too rural to call it a neighborhood, but descriptively, it serves the purpose), our trees are always the last to green in spring, and the last to turn in fall. That hasn’t changed, although we are seeing the gilding of aspens and willows alike earlier than usual, if “usual” can be said to have any meaning any longer. But we still have far more visible green than most around us — although if the current rate of change holds, we shall have precious little left by month’s end.
All signs point to an early winter, and a hard one, too. If their indications prove true, very soon the only green visible will come from the boughs of juniper and pine, blue spruce and fir: evergreen shades beneath blue sky and storm alike.
Today’s featured work, one of Wings’s newest, is manifest in these same shades. It’s a reminder now that, however hard the coming winter onslaught may seem, it is in fact a gift. From its description in the Pendants Gallery here on the site:
In the Sky’s Embrace Pendant
The peaks and waters of a rich green earth rest in the sky’s embrace. With this pendant, Wings calls to the dance the mountain and the seas, the medicine of petaled flowers and the blues of sky and storm. The work is built around a single spectacular focal cabochon of deep green chrysocolla, an unusual combination of emerald and spruce marbled with hints of jet, as mysterious as forest and the ocean depths alike. This outsized oval nestles in a simple scalloped bezel whose edges extend far beyond it, scalloped freehand all the way around to hold sixteen separate small round cabochons, half in bright, clear Sleeping Beauty turquoise and half in the thunderhead blues of lapis lazuli. The modest bail is cut freehand in an elegant flare, stamped deeply with an old traditional motif meant to signify the mountain peaks that ring these lands. Full pendant is 2-1/4″ long, including bail; without bail, 2″ long by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; bail is 3/16″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; chrysocolla cabochon is 1-3/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; small turquoise and lapis cabochons are all 3/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Ships with an 18″ sterling silver snake chain.
Sterling silver; deep green chrysocolla; Sleeping Beauty turquoise; lapis lazuli
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The chrysocolla at the center of this piece is remarkable for its color, not a hint of turquoise blue anywhere in sight. Instead, it’s all the shades of the forested slopes that surround us, an embrasure of earth as well as sky, an elemental manifestation of the boreal alpine deep: of woods and peaks and waters and of course skies both cloud-webbed and clear, of emerald boughs and forest shadows marbling the earth in the lowering light.
It’s an extraordinary work, one that captures a bit of the beauty of this place that goes too often unnoticed, especially as werace to cope not only with impending winter but with the ravages of colonialism-drive climate catastrophe that renders season and weather alike so utterly unpredictable now.
On this day, our skies are clear save for a few wispy traces of white cloud drifting here and there, its color the same shade as the turquoise that holds the center stone in its embrace. But the longer-range forecast has changed, with rain predicted for midweek, straddling that official line that the colonial world insists is the only true demarcation of fall. We’ll welcome it, even though it likely means s shortened period of leaf-turning color, with many of them forced to earth early by the rain. We shall still have all the evergreen shades, beneath blue sky and storm, and soon, the a blanket of snow to cover them.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
