To the south and east, the raging wildfire plume grows.
Yesterday, it exploded several times, forming towering pyrocumulus clouds full of stormy pyrotechnics, flinging ember and hot ash everywhere and contributing to a rather drastic spread in new directions. The plume was so large, in fact, the it never really settled overnight, and now, at midday, it’s every bit as active as yesterday and still growing, its force fed by the velocity of these trickster winds.
The points west and north, the smoke from the fire west of here drifts steadily inward over these lands, and soon we shall have a replay of last night’s sunset, when the smoke plumes wrapped all the way around us, meeting somewhere in the vicinity of Lobo Peak.
It still remains unlikely that either blaze will reach us, but the southeastern portions of the county are now under evacuation orders, and the notion that the ridgeline will keep it from us has suddenly been shown for the fig leaf it always was. The idea that this blaze could reach us is no longer theoretical, no longer merely academic.
More to the point, all that is required is one spark, from a cigarette butt tossed out a car window, a dragging chain, a malfunctioning catalytic converter (as happened yesterday in the southern part of the county, igniting three spot fires), foolish welding or metalwork by someone out of doors . . . any one of these scenarios will set the whole county ablaze in the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.
These are terrifying times.
And yet . . . .
And yet, the Earth soldiers on, slogging through this arid and smoke-ridden season, doing what is given to it to do as best it can under current pressures.
The Say’s phoebe has returned; I heard it for the first time yesterday, and it perched itself in the morning sun on the roof of Wings’s studio today. More surprising, the bush outside the kitchen window was in full and first flower this morning, bright magenta-hued blossoms beading the stalks between dark green leaves. I have been watching it closely, and a few of the other plant spirits, too; after losing so many trees to this drought, every leaf, every bloom, every petal is a gift. Every plant that survives to flower another year? Its very existence is medicine.
There is more than enough to fear these days, and those fears are both right and reasonable. But they crowd out space for joy, which, like the plants, like ourselves, needs to breathe to live.
Every first flower is cause for joy.
It’s an emotion embodied by today’s featured work, and found in its very name, too. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
First Flower Necklace
A single sunlit dewdrop summons the new buds to open in first flower. In this wildflower season, Wings brings sun and dew to the newest petals in this necklace wrought in shades of rose and gold and sterling silver. It begins with the pendant, a stunning giant teardrop of mookaite, a perfect bud of dusty roses petals edged in sunny gold, just ready to open for the first time. This extraordinary cabochon is set into a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, and topped by a tiny round bezel-set citrine cabochon, sun filtered through the dew at dawn. It all hangs from a hand-wrought bail of flared sterling silver, stamped front and back with a single hand-stamped flowering sunburst. The bail hangs over a pair of tiny round ocean jasper beads flanked by small faceted mookaite alternating with ridged barrel beads of bright golden citrine, interspersed throughout the length of the strand with large, silky doughnut rondel and barrel beads of mookaite in mulberry and rose and gold. Each end of the strand is anchored with four round ocean jasper beads flowing into sterling silver findings. Bead strand is 20″ long, excluding findings; pendant, including bail, is another 2.5″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point; visible portion of mookaite cabochon is 3/4″ long; citrine cabochon is 3/16″ across; bail hangs 1/4″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Close-up view of pendant shown below.
Sterling silver; mookaite; citrine; ocean jasper
$1,750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this piece: the bilateral pairing of the warm mookaite barrels; the flash of the faceted citrine that lights up the strand like the very sun; most of all, the clear petaled lines of the flower just ready to open, kissed by a single sunlit dewdrop.
It’s an image we see here often in the early-morning hours of these days of late spring and nascent summer. It’s possible to follow the path of the pollinators to them: In those still moments after the sun is fully up, but the world has not yet entirely awakened, the bees and the butterflies, and the tiny hummingbirds, too, will lead you right to the newest blossoms. As the sun ascends the sky, its possible, too, to watch the dewdrops course down the petals as they open themselves for the first time to the warming light.
These are moments of joy. In a world riddled now with too much harm, too much colonial violence and abuse and inflicted pain, these are moments of medicine.
We have many wildflowers yet to bloom here. Some will open late; a great many, I suspect, will not open at all, and we shall not know until next year whether they are recoverable. That makes the ones that do thrive this year all the more valuable.
We have a hard planting season ahead of us. Much is uncertain; an errant spark, or even a stray violent thunderstorm, can wipe out our work in an instant. But like the Earth herself, we have to soldier on, as well. If she is to survive, we have to put in the work, even when it seems fruitless. We have to save what we can if reclamation and restoration re ever to be possible.
And we have to make space to appreciate what is here still. Every first flower is cause for joy . . . but so is every last one of the summer, too. We need to make sure there are many.
~ 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.
