Last night, the eastern skies put on a show for us for several hours: heat lightning, flashing almost without ceasing, from behind Pueblo Peak. It was an extraordinary display, beautiful and slightly eerie simultaneously.
And it served to remind us once more just how much risk we run here now.
Heat lightning comes from thunderstorms, but it is distant — sufficiently so that we hear no thunder, see and feel no rain, and the light never appears to touch the ground (it actually does touch down; we just can’t tell from so far away). Dry lightning, on the other hand, can be up close and very personal, what’s known as “cloud-to-ground” bolts of lighting that occur in the absence of any accompanying rain.
What appeared to us as the former was undoubtedly the latter for the eastern slopes of the peaks.
And that, in this drought, poses terrible dangers to us all.
The extended forecast insists that the belated rains of summer are a mere six days away . . . but ask anyone who’s ever been too near a wildfire about what can happen in six days — or even six minutes. We need water, and we need it now.
But we know, better than most, that water is its own autonomous spirit, one that will do what it will do, irrespective of human needs or wants. It’s an understanding that infuses language here, in the way we speak of it. Even in the years when melt and runoff were plentiful, when irrigation was a task we performed at least three times a season, Wings has always spoken of the arrival of the waters’ flow as a product of their own sovereignty and discretion: “The water came.”
Not “I brought the water down,” but “The water came,” acknowledging its sovereignty and autonomy, its immanent power as an elemental force and spirit.
It’s an understanding that informs the works that constitute this week’s Friday Feature, a pair of cuff bracelets that share other elements in common, as well. Both were created mere weeks apart, both built around dazzling blue focal cabochons from the same parcel. Both are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the one shown above; from its description:
When the Water Comes Cuff Bracelet
Pond or lake, rain or river, the ebb and flow of the tides: When the water comes, it comes as the First Medicine. Wings honors the medicine as he summons the rains and the pooled waters of the bluest of lakes with this cuff, hand-wrought in eighteen-gauge sterling silver. The band is hand-scored on either side and hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of radiant crescents connected by tiny sacred hoops; between the scored borders is a flowing water motif, connected at the ends by tiny petals in flower. The space between stampwork and edge is hand-texturized on either side, via hundreds of tiny dots struck individually by hand. At the center, elevated slightly from the bands surface, sits a breathtaking cabochon of lapis lazuli, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed in twisted silver to offset its extraordinary cobalt blue infused with shimmering pyrite. The focal stone is flanked on either side by a pair of Skystones, each a small square of Sleeping Beauty turquoise, surface freeform in texture, color the blue of the desert sky adrift with more bits of pyrite amid an inky black matrix. The band is 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across; the bezel for the focal cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; the focal lapis cabochon is 1-1/4″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; Square Sleeping Beauty cabochons are each 7/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I’ve chosen to show this one from this particular side view, because it presents the bright cobalt blue of the focal, the rolling textured surface of the turquoise, the extraordinary glow of the silver’s Florentine finish, and the rich texture of the freehand stampwork that forms the scalloped borders, all to truly stunning effect. It’s a powerfully beautiful (and beautifully powerful) work of wearable art, one that channels the blue medicine of the sacred lake that serves as the watersheds source, braiding with shades of sky and light.
The second of today’s featured works is built around a cabochon from the same parcel as the one above, but is set upon a simpler band. This one, instead of highlighting the autonomous way of the water, instead focuses on the work requires of us to put it to proper use, for land, community, and selves. From its description:
Weaving Water Cuff Bracelet
Here at Red Willow, working with the First Medicine is a process of weaving water, drawing down rain and river alike to flow across the land in silvery threads, taken up by the earth on its way to pool in the pond at the end of the ditch. Wings brings together pool and process alike in this cuff, a silky, silvery band of woven strands meeting in the middle at a lake of pure cobalt. The band is formed of two substantial strands of sterling silver pattern wire, possessed of an elegant Art Deco sensibility and molded into a scored lines with braided overlays at intervals, the strands spaced gently apart at the center and narrowing to meet at either end. At the top of the band’s surface, an extraordinary oval cabochon of electric blue lapis lazuli, adrift with wisps of white and whorls of shimmering gold and silver pyrite, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with its own delicate braid of twisted silver. Band is 6″ long; each strand is 1/4″ across; cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Side views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$1,100 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weaving water is what we have always done here, drawing the strands of blue-tinted silver down the ditches and across the land, wrapping one first over this field, then another over a second, then a third down a separate ditch to fill the pond, thence pumping it out to grass and trees and gardens on all sides. It’s a process and practice and praxis of shared gifts of earth and sky, the better to ensure that none is wasted and all have what they need.
It’s a reminder, too, of the significance of such community approaches as our world enters this new apocalyptic era of climate collapse. We shall need such approaches more than ever, but indications from the colonial world are not merely not hopeful; they are actively, aggressively anti-community, and anti-climate as well.
We all have much work to do.
For now, while we do what small actions are open to us, we await the arrival of the rains, and renewed opportunity for braiding the blue.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
