It’s going to be a long, hot weekend. Today’s high is projected only for the mid-eighties, but beginning tomorrow, the mercury will pass ninety and keep going up on into next week.
Two hundred bales. That’s how many we’ll have to load and stack, then unload and restack, over the next couple of days. We’ll be spending the weekend on the land, working with the fruits of the earth — and we’re going to need plenty of water.
Today, with modern conveniences and usually-ready access to clean water at nearly any store, people forget just how elemental a need it is. We have entered an era in which a sizeable portion of the population has never gone without clean running water — more, without access to filtered bottled water, potable and portable. But the reality is that this is a very new development.
Of course, if you’ve ever had the chance to drink clean water straight from a spring, you’ll know that there’s no comparison between it and bottled water in terms of taste. It’s the presence of minerals in the right proportion that give natural spring and well water their wonderful flavor. [And, of course, if you’ve ever been forced to drink hard water heavy with iron, you’ll know just unpalatable it’s possible for potable water to be, too.] But these days, there’s fairly ready access to bottled water, provided that you can afford to buy it.
It wasn’t all that long ago that bottled water — of the mass-produced and mass-marketed variety — didn’t exist. For that matter, it wasn’t that long ago that plastic didn’t exist. In fewer than a hundred years, we’ve reduced nearly every aspect of daily life, it seems, into something small and portable, light-weight and hand-held and taken thoroughly for granted. I’m old enough to remember a time when the most effective means by which to carry cold drinking water was a heavy Thermos. Go back another generation or two, and the only option was a flask.
It seems odd now to people, especially young ones, that our parents and grandparents lived in a world devoid of smartphones and tablet computers, of Internet and streaming video, of overnight deliveries and high-speed jets, of plastic bottles and iced lattes. Stranger still to think that my own father knew what it was to live without running water or electricity, to travel by horse-drawn wagon, to carry water as he worked in the fields in a flask that he could tie to his belt or to a horse’s saddle.
It really has not been so long ago that flasks were an ordinary part of daily life.
Of course, they bore little resemblances to today’s space-age plastic bottles. Those made of animal organs and skins didn’t do much to keep the water cold, and the later metal ones would actually heat it up. The clay versions were better at keeping their contents cool, but they were heavy, not well-suited to carrying during a long journey on foot. But on horseback, a clay flask could be tied to a pack or the saddlehorn, and still perform its function fairly well.
Our peoples knew this, and, ever practical, our potters adapted their work accordingly. There was a time when clay flasks were a more common sight in collections of Native art, even those comprising more modern works, but it’s an art form that finds fewer practitioners these days. Perhaps it’s simply the attenuation of collective memory, a relegation of them to the past from a present in which they are no longer needed, present in which they seem archaic, artifacts of a time perceived as long gone.
Still, it’s occasionally possible to find such works wrought entirely in the old way: from the earth, and from the water. cured in the air and tempered in the fire. We have one such work in oru inventory, the last and only one, and it’s a special piece in many respects. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
This classic water flask was hand-made many years ago by Wings’s sister, Cynthia Bernal Pemberton (Taos Pueblo). Made of Taos Pueblo’s iconic micaceous clay, the flask is pristine but for the turtle carved in relief on the front. It hangs from a white deerhide thong. Stands 7.5″ high by 6.5″ across at widest point (dimensions approximate).
Micaceous clay
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
We tend to regard the elements as discrete and disparate spirits, as forces that exist in opposition to one another. But in fact, they also form their own unions, partnerships and collectives, working cooperatively at times, complementarily at others. Sometimes, it’s an effort to bolster one of their number, or to transform its identity; at others, it’s a way of creating a greater and wholly unique whole out of the sum of their various parts.
This work is a wedding of earth and water in a rite officiated by air and fire, one that melds the two into a unified whole: one in which earth’s identity dominates, but one whose purpose serves the water. It’s also a tribute to tradition, to culture, to history and ancestry.
Perhaps it is a lesson, as well? A reminder, and a beautiful one, of the inherent value of the old ways, even as we perceive them to be in tension with the new? Contemporary conveniences are wonderful things, but their use gains meaning in their contrast with older ways of living . . . and, when evaluated relative to history, in the continuity they can help provide for tradition in a modern world.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
