As is typical here of spring, the weather can’t decide what it wants to do, nor even what season it prefers. We careen wildly from highs exceeding sixty to ambient air temperatures that feel twenty degrees colder, courtesy of the customary fierce winds that mark this time of year here. For all that, though, today at least is mostly sunny — high white clouds drifting across a turquoise sky, and a wind that has not yet risen enough to make being out of doors uncomfortable.
These are the dry days of spring, the kind to which we are most accustomed here. It’s a reminder that, however fortunate we have been thus far with unseasonal rains and snows, our planting season is not secure, nor is any harvest.
At this moment, the early blooms are visible mostly on certain among the cactus species indigenous to this place, and where we live, precious few even of those. However, were we to venture outward, particularly west and south of here, we would find plenty of cholla blossoms now in full flower: delicate petals in white and pink and magenta and lilac fluttering gracefully atop their spiny, spiky stalks.
One of the reasons I love the cholla is that they are exemplars of this harsh, often sere land, the perfect blend of fragility and strength, vulnerability and power that keeps them, and our world here with it, thriving. This is a hard land, true, but a stark and stunning one, a place of soaking rains, sharp spines, and soft petals all collaborating to create a rare beauty amid conditions so arid that it’s hard to credit the blooming of flowers.
And yet they are. Like us, they are.
Today’s featured works embody this strength of spirit very literally. Made of cholla cactus themselves, they are a perfect example of Indigenous ingenuity, converting that which eventually decays into a spiky hardness into something of utility and beauty, too. From their description in the Other Artists: Leatherwork, Antler, and Bone gallery here on the site:
Keep your keys close at hand, secure on one of these unique little keychains by Anespah Bernal Marcus (Taos Pueblo). Made from lengths of cholla cactus, harvested locally, each is thoroughly defanged and smoothed. She then wraps them securely at both ends in tanned leather thongs. One end is attached to the ring with a loop; at the other, a bead channels the thongs into a pair of tassels. Some have a tiny nugget of turquoise embedded in an opening in the cholla. Length, bead color, and nugget availability vary. Lengths range between 3″ and 4″ long, not including tassels (dimensions approximate).
Cholla cactus, leather, plastic beads, turquoise, metal ring
$25 each + shipping, handling, and insurance
Most of those in the photo have long since sold. Only four remain, and they are known by the color of the beads that bind their leather thongs: one emerald green; one magenta; two lilac. These four seem also to embody the spirit of the living cholla in full flower, sparse green leaves, magenta and lilac petals fluttering in the breeze.
As key chains, these small once-living bits of wood are unique. As teachers, they are invaluable: They remind us, in a time of great risk and unrest, of many of our traditional lessons, teachings that have kept our peoples alive through more than half a millennium of overt campaigns to reach the opposite result. As a world, we to learn anew how to conserve, how to ration, how to make use of the smallest amounts, the way the cholla manages the rainfall. We need to relearn, in the face of new privations, how to conserve our own strength, how to stand tall and brave in harsh conditions. And we need to relearn delicacy and beauty, lest we let fear and danger turn us always hard, never flowering.
It’s a lot packed into a very small package. And it’s all done the old way — a reminder that the rain and the spines and the petals each have their place, and they all have much to teach us now.
~ Aji
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