The wind howled and gibbered the night through and on into today, ushering the smoke from western wildfires directly overhead to settle in a heavy, choking pall. We awakened to western skies not their usual post-dawn indigo, but the color of red earth, a haze of particulate matter shimmering as though lit with the same mica as the local clay.
It’s not a day to be out of doors, but there is so much work to be done.
Wildfires are neither new nor unnatural here, but in a land increasingly overdeveloped, most of it managed by the colonial approach of ownership rather than stewardship, such fires, even those sparked by natural causes, are increasingly dangerous. That’s all the more true now, as we prepare to enter formal summer under the added pall of pandemic. Combine such circumstances with the dangers of this deepening drought, and one can feel catastrophe hovering, looming with every labored breath.
There is one gift such conditions give us, and in times such as these, we learn to take our blessings where we find them. In this case, it’s simply momentary flashes of beauty to bookend the day: In a sky the color of the earth, a few minutes of reddening flame, safely distant, to light a land wrapped in darkness.
It is these moments of beauty that keep the fire alive in our hearts and spirits now. We shall need strong hearts, filled with bravery and the love that makes it possible to face a dangerous world, in the days and weeks to come. Today’s featured work is the embodiment of such a strong and courageous spirit, wrought on a scale that echoes that between us and the great wide world that holds such risks for us now. It’s a piece also wrought of the very earth for which this land is known, rich red clay shimmering with the internal fire of mica, and bearing a medicine bundle in the colors of a sunset sky: a nugget of pure crimson coral flanked with orange and yellow, gold and black. From its description in the Other Artists: Fetishes gallery here on the site:
Medicine Buffalo Fetish
Ben Romero (Taos Pueblo) has coaxed Buffalo into taking shape out of the Pueblo’s own micaceous clay. The strong and solid little animal gleams in the light, his stylized shaggy head gazing out beneath a colorful medicine bundle of feathers, quills, a fabric rosette, and vintage-style beads. Buffalo stands 1.5″ high by 2-1/8″ long (dimensions approximate). Another view shown below.
Micaceous clay; quills; feathers; beads; fabric; sinew
$30 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Buffalo is an elder brother, a signifier of strength and solidity and protection, yes, but also an inspiration to bravery and steadfastness in ourselves. As we watch the western skies shift in shades of red and coral, orange and brown, as we don our pandemic masks to block the particulate matter in the suffocating smoke, we are reminded that there is beauty, and there is medicine, to be found even in such circumstances.
And as the sun sets on the last full day of official spring this evening, a day in which our whole small world finds it difficult to breathe, we will give thanks for the moments of the beauty that heal us. A few minutes of reddening flame in the skies are enough to stoke the fires in our hearts and spirits anew, so that tomorrow we may be like Buffalo: strong, brave, ready to defend the Earth, and her children too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
