I awakened a little before dawn, that time of haunting beauty when the sky is already lightening, but the sun has some time yet before it rises. It was otherworldly, thin pleated bands of white cloud, impossibly straight and narrow lines hovering directly over the peaks from north to east, the Morning Star rising directly above this side of Pueblo Peak and trailing a silver crescent moon beneath it.

It’s time such as this here that take one’s breath away, that remind us that, however difficult the ensuing day may be, underneath it all this remains a place of mystery and magic and medicine.

Now, of course, the skies have traded those thin horizontal pleats for giant thunderheads boiling up over the same peaks and ridgelines, the kind of clouds we don’t normally expect here until the end of May, even early June. Of course, even aside from the fact that there is no “normal” now, these are not clouds that hold any weather for us; all we will be granted today is the ferocity [and velocity] of an ever-rising trickster wind. Aside from the lack of precipitation, it makes the day seem much colder than it is, and while the official temperature and wind chill, according to the weather service, are identical now at sixty-seven, we know how terribly false both numbers truly are: Our own actual temperature is seventy-one, but the wind chill makes it feel more like an exceptionally cold fifty-five.

Meanwhile, our humidity level is down to its customary twelve percent for this time of year. Everything is impossibly dry, dangerously so. We are once more under fire weather warnings, because in this place in this drought in these conditions? The smallest spark will ignite a conflagration capable of consuming everything in its path.

We have more wind in the forecast, no real chance of rain before the middle of next week. Even then, at this long a remove, we know it’s a crapshoot; the forecast will change many times between now and then, and whether any possibility of  rain still remains by then is an open question at the very best.

But still, we do the work of preparing, because one truth remains inescapable:  The path from spring to harvest is a direct one, short and absolutely necessary. And there will be none of the latter if we don’t that what precedes it is healthy and capable of growth.

This week’s Friday Feature embodies this path, and, indeed, manages to incorporate all four seasons into it, from the end of winter to the early gifts of fall. It consists of three related works, all found in Wings’s signature series, The Beaded Hoop Collection, in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site. Each is from its own series-within-a-series, trios that were designed explicitly to coordinate with and complement each other [and some pieces of which are now sold]. Each also features some of the extraordinary blues for which each season here is so well known. We begin with the one created explicitly for this season, for the atmospheric conditions that carry us from winter to spring, from last snow, first rain, and thence to abundance. It’s from The Spring Elementals:  Water; from its description:

From Last Snow, First Rain Necklace

Spring is the season of the thaw: From last snow, first rain falls. With this necklace, Wings calls the water into a great descending hoop that transmutes the one into the other. The strand. is anchored by tiny sterling silver doughnut rondels alternating with paired icy selenite rounds. The beads flow downward in a gradiant of snowy color and newly-exposed earth via segments of cloud and Picasso jaspers set off by thick rondels of ultra-high-grade aquamarine, like the last of the frozen lake ice. Giant orbs of snowy white coral, richly textured, paired with solitary doughnut rondels of snowflake obsidian, diminish to single spheres alternating with the rich raincloud blue of Dumortierite. At the center, three giant freeform barrels of fabulously webbed iolite, as deep a blue as any storm, are held in the embrace of more icy aquamarine, a reminder that the early rain is still a cold one. Necklace hangs 23″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with The Dewdrop Returns to the Dawn earrings and The Thaw Becomes the River [sold] coil bracelet. From the Water series in Wings’s new collection, The Spring Elementals (all pieces shown at the link).

Strand:  Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: Iolite; ultra-high-grade aquamarine; white coral; Dumortierite; snowflake obsidian;
Picasso jasper; cloud jasper; selenite; sterling silver
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Frankly, I expected this to be one of the first of its series to sell. The gemstone-bead works strung with rich blues are usually among the first to go, and this one certainly has plenty of them, from royal to violet to indigo to midnight. They are slightly more muted shades, true — the softer, gentler shades of the rain in a place where harsher, more extreme versions are so often the norm. It also links snow and rain together beautifully, a manifestation of the transition between icy cold and weather warm enough to be well past the melting point, both gifts that feed and nurture our earth.

And that nurturing is a necessary condition for the work of summer here. The second of today’s featured works is that season still to come, one that, given our current conditions, seems just around the corner now. It’s from The Summer Elementals:  Earth, and it reminds us that, when e are granted the medicine the previous work embodies, this becomes a land where the blue corn grows, lush and fertile and capable of that great abundance mentioned earlier. From its description:

Where the Blue Corn Grows Necklace

In this place, the summer earth is where the blue corn grows, stalks tall and ears a mix of cornflower and ivory, gold and violet. With this necklace, Wings honors the rich red-brown soil that births it, the green stalks and leaves that hold it gently, and the brilliant kernels that will become food, offerings, medicine. At either end, the strand is anchored by tiny round diamond-cut sterling silver beads that flash like the mica that makes the local clay shimmer, then alternates between round Chinese writing stone orbs in two shades of rich earthy brown and extraordinary chrysoprase barrel beads in glowing jade green marbled with golden-brown matrix. The chrysoprase dances with freeform yellow opal, luminous white-lip mother-of-pearl shell rounds, and freeform nuggets of stormy blue Dumortierite in a gradient that resembles the rows of kernels in an ear of blue corn. The best of the blue Indian corn sits at the center like an offering, an extraordinary violet-blue barrel of natural iolite flanked on either side by paired orbs of glossy Dumortierite in shades of indigo and cornflower. Necklace hangs 22″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with From the Richest Clay earrings [sold] and A Wild Earth Medicine coil bracelet [sold]. From the Earth series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown st the link).

Strand:  Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: Iolite; Dumortierite; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell; yellow opal;
chrysoprase; Chinese writing stone; diamond-cut sterling silver
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance

This is another one that I thought would be snapped up quickly, particularly given how perfectly it embodies the blue corn of its name. The earthy brown writing stone is the color of the clay here, that electric green chrysocolla a perfect match to the color of the cornstalks. And since actual blue corn is not entirely blue, but a mix of whites and yellows and blue shades that range from royal to violet, all manifest in the irregularly rounded shapes of the kernels, the rest of the strand embodies each ear in starkly beautiful form.

Of course, growing corn is a season-long process. In a good year [such as we have not had in almost a decade now], we might plant the kernels around the third week of May; the first shoots would arrive in June, become measurable [if short] stalks by July. In terms of height, they would come into their own between late July and early August, but the ears would be new and small until the early days of fall . . . or, as that period is so often known, Indian summer. [And yes, I know all the modern arguments against the phrase’s use, and frankly would side-eye non-Native people using it, but for us, it was a childhood joy, and as children we reclaimed it long before we knew what the words even meant. In that era, representation was nearly nonexistent, and something so closely associated with longer hours of play before dark was something to be celebrated.]

And so we come to the third and final of today’s featured works — one that was not a part of the Elementals series, but rather, of its own small standalone series, Indian Summer Nights. It was created not during that season but in anticipation of it — late August, to be exact, the time when the first harvest moon of the year rides high in the still-warm night sky. From its description:

First Harvest Moon Necklace

In a good year, Indian summer nights bring the first harvest moon. With this necklace, The first in Wings’s new Indian Summer Nights trio, he honors season, time, and the amber glow of the moon hanging near and low. The entire strand replicates a recurrent pattern: a fiery freeform nugget of old amber, flanked by olivella-shell heishi and a pair of old lapis lazuli rounds that in turn flank bronzed metal saucer beads that hold a single white pearl in their embrace. At the very center, an outsized amber nugget serves as the focal; at either end, saucer beads hold segments of heishi between them. The pearl beads are old, but most likely fashion pearls; similarly, the old saucer beads are metal, but likely plate. Necklace hangs 22″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with Rare Blue Moons earrings and Early Hunter’s Moon coil bracelet [sold]. From Wings’s new Indian Summer Nights limited series (all pieces shown at the link).

Strand:  Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
Lapis lazuli; old amber; white pearl (likely fashion pearl); bronzed metal; olivella-shell heishi
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance

This one is the newest of the three, and in many ways, the most electric. It, too, is one that I expected to sell almost immediately, and in point of fact, the matching coil did. But the necklace and earrings, my own two favorite pieces of this trio, still remain. The blues are bright, a pointed contrast with the pearlescent white, and the amber? The amber here is something extraordinary, big, chunky nuggets of rich, resiny fire, all paired for general size and shape. This one is eye-catching, bold and substantive without feeling heavy.

Which is what we need now, both from those who would “lead” us, and from the Earth insofar as her wounded self is capable of providing it: boldness, substance, but not the crushing weight that threatens us all now. These are dark days, and darker ones lie ahead of us still. But this is spring, and the light grows longer; the air warms, and at some point, we shall be able to sow the earth with seeds once more.

Literally, and metaphorically.

But time is short. The path from spring to harvest is direct, and brief, and we have little time to rescue the earth, either the land upon which we walk or the planet that sustains us all.

We all need to turn our hands to this work now.

~ Aji

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