Today, it’s possible to believe in spring.
Despite so much unseasonal warmth, that hasn’t really been the case before now: too much underlying dampness, too much of a cold and bitter wind.
And today’s feeling won’t last, probably not even the length of the daylight hours. But for the moment, the sun is out, the wind is still, and it’s possible to walk out of doors without a coat and feel . . . warm. Calm. Content.
The world is awakening alongside us, too; you can feel her stirring, shifting, turning to face the light. This is her hard season, too, as much as it is ours, and a busy one for all of us. There is much ground to cover, and uncover — less a process of travel than a state of being, a traverse of time and season.
The village has been closed to all outsiders for some three weeks now, and will remain so for another five. This is not Quiet Season (that distinction belongs to December, when the gates are still mostly open), but it is a quiet season, one of ceremony and prayer and teaching and medicine, for the people and for the earth. Meanwhile, in that stillness, you can hear the earth awaken, feel her heartbeat, feel the waters, her lifeblood, now thawing to course through her veins. You can see the tundra emerging from the snow upon the peaks, watch the clouds pile on top of themselves as they try to reach ever higher skies, see the rich red-brown soil soften underfoot and under hoof, welcoming traverse in its own way.
It’s an old word, traverse: as verb, the accent is on the second syllable, but as noun, squarely on the first. It’s a word used, in another language, by my own people for millennia, a recognition of seeming impassability and the ways Spirit gives us to make the journey anyway. Here, they are other words for traveling, and as with my own, such journeys might take a month or a day, depending on the object.
And sometimes, the journey takes you off what you thought would be your path, leading you in new directions in pursuit of your goal.
In today’s featured work, that path cuts across the earth newly revealed, wends its way through the chamisa and sage making ready to revive themselves for another year. It winds its way through new growth beneath white-dotted turquoise skies, in pursuit, perhaps, of a rabbit, or perhaps just a day in the warming air and light. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
The Rabbit Hunt Painting
Traditionally-dressed tribal members on horseback participate in a rabbit hunt in the shadow of the mountain. Summer thunderheads tower above in the turquoise sky, the warm red earth beneath the horses’ hooves dotted with stones and silvery sage. Unframed; 8-5/8″ wide by 6″ high (dimensions approximate).
Acrylic on canvas stretched over wood
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece is emblematic of Frank’s outstanding talent and skill, the capacity to translate what seems to outsiders a simple scene into a deeply layered expression of culture and traditional life. It’s also an example of his affinity for the shapes and shades of the natural world here, what the rest of the world sees as a harsh, sere landscape granted its full form and texture, all earthy curves and rounded shoulders, graceful slopes and gentle hues. It’s a capturing of place and path as one, of the making of the journey and the state of being, too: traverse and traverse, both a means of navigation and the object that gets us from here to there.
It’s a journey from winter into spring, as the Earth herself moves and as she intends for her children, a traverse of time and season, always traveling to the light.
~ Aji
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