This week has at once flown by and yet seemed impossibly long, and it will seem longer still before it is done with us.
We spent yesterday on the road, traveling to Santa Fe and back for my medical testing. It was extremely costly, but it’s done, and the results I was given were all I could have asked. This morning, we awakened a little before five o’clock to discover that we had no water.
It appears that our well pump — or some component within it, capacitor or relay — has failed. The well itself has been in place for about a quarter of a century now, but we have already had to replace the pump once: fewer than nine years ago, and there is no justifying its failure in that short period of time. If we are lucky, it will be nothing more than the capacitor or the relay, both costly but less so that the entire pump, and both replaceable from the top side. We’re currently awaiting a plumber’s arrival to evaluate the problem.
But it means that we currently have no water, on what promises to be an unseasonally hot day again. And given one aspect of yesterday’s travel, it raises the question of just what might be being damaged by external forces here that have nothing to do with us, but everything to do with colonial profiteering, exploitation, and ongoing harm.
The drive to Santa Fe begins, just south of town, with a passage through the Gorge, following the wending downstream path of the Río Grandé. Yesterday brought us a beautiful morning, clear and bright, deep blue autumnal skies above a land more lush and green than it has been in several years now. Our hopes for the river’s health, on the other hand, were not high, because we have borne witness to its water level dropping progressively as this twelve-hundred year drought and climage collapse have taken hold. But even so, we were wholly unprepared for what we saw.
The water level was indeed low — dangerously so, new shoals having formed mid-river all the way long, now sprouting weed cover that appeared, from that distance, to be of an invasive variety. There were no birds. None. About a third of the way down the canyon, traffic presence flushed out a group of four or so pigeons, or perhaps Eurasian collared doves (invasive species, both) from the slopes on the opposite side of the highway; they shot through the air across the road in front of us, continuing on past the cliffs opposite.
It was not until we were nearly to the end that we saw the first water birds: a pair of malnourished-looking Canadian geese, perched some distance apart on a sandbar in a place where the waters should be still and deep. One was pecking listlessly at the weed cover, trying to find sustenance; the other seemed to have given up entirely. On our way home, we saw the first goose still at it, but the other had disappeared, and no other birds save a half-dozen or so crows in flight showed themselves on the return trip.
We did, however, see a giant raft filled with tourists churning waters that were already so badly damaged it took our breath away.
It wasn’t just the water level, which was dangerously low throughout (so low, in fact, that rafting and boating should be banned entirely now). It was the color and consistency of the water itself: no blue, no green, not even any clear spots; it was a sickly yellowish-brown, filled with damaged silt, the kind of the waters that poison animal and plant life alike.
It was frightening, and it made us both feel ill to look at it.
Last night, we learned the cause, one that Wings had already speculated was the culprit: mudslides upland and upriver from us, currently being attributed by authorities and media to simple rain on “volcanic remnants” but in fact the result of untold years of unremediated damage from this article’s dismissively throwaway final three words: “the Questa mine.” If you scroll through the ten photos at the top of the piece you’ll see the color of the mud, which is exactly the color and consistency of the waters of the Great River as we witnessed it yesterday. That is not the local clay’s natural color here; it’s a product of deadly molybdenum mining that has damaged these lands irreparably for decades, and for which the mine’s corporate owner, Chevron, is to this day trying to elude accountability.
No amount of rainfall caused this new disaster, and no amount can heal it.
There is also no telling the amount of damage these mudslides are doing to those of us downslope and downriver, to our lands and our wells and our plant and animal relatives who depend upon a healthy earth and watershed for survival. Southwest of here, at Abiquiu, people are once again being warned to keep their pets out of the lake, as it is once again alive with a toxic algal bloom that is deadly for dogs. Up the highway from us, environmental transgressions continue apace as the billionaire hedge-fund owner of the ski resort keeps expanding, and the village up there keeps enabling it [often in ways that transgress the law, as well; there are lawsuits and investigations ongoing currently].
There is so much here that must be done if this bit of Mother Earth and her children are to be saved, but it is perhaps most essential now to remediate the watersheds: rivers and lakes, springs and streams and ponds, and the rain, as well. Returning the waters to the shade of the sky would be a good start.
This week’s Friday Feature consists of three works from the same category that all illustrate waters and sky both in their healthier states, and in beautifully apt form. All three are found in the Earrings Gallery here on the site. We begin with the pair that is biggest, bold bright blue teardrops manifest in the form and shape of the First Medicine, the gift we are granted when the sky opens to deliver the rain. From its description:
When the Sky Opens Earrings
When the sky opens, the First Medicine falls . . . and a lucky few will find drops hardened into gems on the earth at their feet. With these earrings, Wings honors the crackling skies, electric blue with a fine web of clouds, and the talismanic power of the turquoise to which they lend color and name. Each dangling drop is set with stones like shards of the shell of a robin’s egg, am arched pair of slightly freeform teardrop cabochons of natural American turquoise. They’re slightly more blue than they render here, like the morning desert sky, and the light matrix veins are more coppery red than the gold that shows on-screen. The color could indicate Kingman, but we believe it to be Royston, from Nevada, both stone and matrix color a perfect match to the increasingly rare material from that mine that is mostly untouched by heavy inclusions of matrix. Each is set into a hand-made sterling silver bezel, low-profile to set off the beauty of the stones, against lightly flanged backings edged with twisted silver. These are matched cabochons, but they vary slightly in width, and there is a definite left and right to this pair; for purposes of the dimensions listed, the one shown on the left on-screen is worn in the right ear, while the one shown on the right here is the left earring. Each drop hangs 1-5/8″ long, excluding wires, by 7/8″ across at the widest point (right earring) and 5/8″ across at the widest point (left earring); cabochons are 1/1/4″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point (right earring) and 9/16″ across at the widest point (left earring) (all dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; natural American turquoise, likely blue Royston
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This pair is extraordinary: cabochons matched but not perfectly identical, albeit drown from the same bit of earth, cut from the same nugget of Skystone. They are big and bold and yet not too heavy, and Wings has set them in such a way as to let the stones speak for themselves.
If only those in authority and control of such things would allow the rest of our world to speak for itself, too.
The second pair’s identity is collective, dependent upon both halves for its existence — a lesson that humanity clearly needs to relearn. It’s a nearly opalescent manifestation of where the rivers meet, tributaries catching the color of the blue sky above as they spill into the Great River that feeds these lands year-round. From its description:
Where the Rivers Meet Earrings
In this alpine desert land, where the rivers meet is a place of medicine. With these earrings, Wings honors this great gift of this place even as he summons the beauty of their brilliant blues framed by rich earth and silvered light. Each dangling drop is formed around an oval cabochon of ribbon [boulder] turquoise, light earthy browns veined with deeper hues and bisected by a sky-blue river of nearly opalescent turquoise. The matched cabochons are drawn from the same earth, each ribbon lifting upward at the inner end as though to meet in the middle. Each is set into a plain, low-profile bezel on a lightly flanged backing to hold the twisted silver that frames each stone so beautifully. Each hangs from a sterling silver jump ring fused securely to reverse at top center, the rings threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead earring wires. Earrings hang 1-1/8″ long including bails (excluding wires); bezels are 1″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 7/8″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; ribbon [boulder] turquoise, likely Kingman
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This photo was shot with a flash, picking up all the subtle gradations of color in the boulder, its own veins and capillaries stark against the skin of its background host rock. But it is the blues that stand out in the light: not a high, slick polish, for such is not needed to show off its clear sky-blue beauty and intensely-hued glow. it’s a much starker contrast in this pair than in the one below, which features more subtle lines of inclusion, and also more subtle shades of blue, and yet, the next pair speaks to me more powerfully still.
Today’s third and final pair, my personal favorite of these three, is an embodiment of all of the wild rivers that come together to sustain this harsh, sere landscape under relentless skies and seemingly impossible odds now. From its description:
Wild Rivers Earrings
This alpine desert land is one veined with the lifeblood of wild rivers, of streams and sacred lakes and watersheds large and small that feed the land and give it life and breath. With these earrings, Wings pays tribute to their wending pathways and the craggy walls and banks that hold them safe in their embrace. The focals are a pair of matched freeform, slightly irregular ovals of boulder turquoise, sometimes called ribbon turquoise, in rich earthy browns and tributaries of nearly opalescent blue, shades and shadows of water and sky at this elevation. Each stone is set into a hand-made bezel, plain and low-profile, set upon a flanged backing saw-cut freehand and extended just enough to accommodate the edgework of twisted silver that limns each bezel. At top, slender flat jump rings are soldered securely to the reverse; threaded through them are sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 1-1/4″ long including bail (excluding wires); settings are 1-1/16″ long by 13/16″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 7/8″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point (all dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; boulder (ribbon) turquoise, likely Kingman
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Again, these a re clearly cut from the same nugget, pulled from the same patch of earth, and yet they are unique, neither identical nor even exact mirror images, even if they are closer to the latter. The softness of the shading, the fine, filament-thin streaks of sky blue framing the larger ribbons throughout the host rock seem as gentle as they are powerful — like medicine, of the first and most necessary sort.
And they remind us how much work we have to do. It’s not merely halting the current harms, nor preventing future ones; it’s the untold violence wrought over years, decades, generations, centuries of colonial occupation that must be repaired, remediated, the land and air and waters and sky reclaimed and renewed and rebirthed again. There is a logical starting point staring us all in the face right now, one that urgently demands our attention before we pass a tipping point beyond which there is no return. We can begin by returning the waters to the shade of the sky, nurturing the land and its children with clean, clear medicine.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
