It’s been a long day.
We spent part of it traveling alongside the Great River, down and back, as we journeyed to the far side of Santa Fe and returned late this afternoon. Our last trip that way, three short weeks ago, was both haunting and haunted, not a single bird anywhere along the Gorge, either at the water or overhead. Today, we counted nine or ten on the way down, a few more on the return trip — a little less eerie, but no less heartbreaking when we came within view of the water.
It’s never been this low.
In some places, the red willows are overtaking banks and sandbars alike, one of the few indigenous species sufficiently drought-hardy to survive such minuscule water levels. More worrying is the expansion of the sandbars themselves, and the banks that are fast turning into beaches. The water level is so low that fallen boulders, once wholly covered by the rapids, are now almost wholly dry, the waves rising only inches above the riverbed.
And the slopes, which should already be thoroughly blanketed in white, are brown and dry.
At every single level colonial governments are doing the exact opposite of what must be done if the Earth, and we with her, are to survive. It”s not a question of banning plastic straws and inducing everyone to buy an overpriced electric vehicle sold by an uber-colonizer who inherited his fortune from pliable pols and from a legacy of slavery and genocide, one he shows every intention of carrying on, and carrying into space.
We need to halt the cultural behaviors that consider these the only options, that worship at the altars of “development” and “expansion” while persistently refusing any moratorium on extraction, burning, building, traveling, and siphoning off the water.
Yes, I am saying exactly that: The way this colonial world works is going to have to stop, or the world itself will do it for them.
No, I’m not suggesting some idealized notion proffered by colonial interests that reduces our histories to “noble savage” nonsense. I’m referring to a complete shift in values and goals and daily ways of living and being, one that understands, no matter what the white world thinks, that the Earth is in fact our relative.
Would you seek to capitalize on your relative’s existence for personal gain, or would you take care of them and cherish them? Of course, in the colonial world, we know that familial relation makes no difference; it’s focused entirely on the former and scorns the latter as weakness.
If that’s how the outside world defines “weak,” then may no one be strong.
Of course, we know otherwise. Our ancestors handed down the teachings the world so desperately needs today, teachings that affirm the essential, elemental truth that real strength lies in caring for, nurturing, protecting, and defending our relatives, and not just the human ones.
And in truth, if we were focused on that, we would have far more time to appreciate the gifts the world gives us in return, earth and air and fire and water, wind and storm and sky and light. Today’s feature work embodies these gifts in beautiful form, and the calmer, easier, more serene way of being that accompanies such values and acts. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
Frank Rain Leaf (Taos Pueblo) evokes both ancient and modern representation of person and place in this acrylic painting of a traditionally-dressed Pueblo flute player. This is one of Frank’s most iconic and popular images, one he has used as a model for smaller art media such as greeting cards. It’s an image of the warm season, as awash in color as the bed of the Rio Pueblo it depicts. A young man in traditional moccasins, leggings, wrap, and braids sits beneath an old-style arbor, built by hand, blanket off to the side and a fire at his feet, while he plays a Native flute, an accompaniment to the song of the river.
Acrylic on canvas; wood frame
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragility requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Frank is one of Wings’s oldest friends and fellow artists; they grew up together, and still tell stories of hunting trips when they were young, all piled into an old Pinto. They both grew up knowing that art was their vocation, although their paths diverged when it came to choosing a medium. Frank’s graphical and illustrative work is known locally, regionally, and far beyond for its brilliant use of color and its meticulous attention to the smallest details of traditional life.
This piece is a personal favorite, for all of those reasons, but also for the slower, more attentive, more traditional way of life that it represents. The young man in the painting is seated in an arbor built by hand, alongside a backcountry riverside. This is not the Río Grandé, but one of its tributaries, upstream and upslope in the mountains here, but in a good year, when the waters are healthy and full, even these smaller streams race downstream at rollicking levels, their depths bluer than the sky above and encrusted with whitecaps that shimmer like diamonds in the light.
When the waters are healthy and full.
This is obviously a scene from the warm season, fire notwithstanding; it does, after all, get chilly in the mountains even in broad daylight, and positively cold around the monsoons or after dusk. And summer, in theory, should be when the water level is lower, having absorbed the spring thaw and sent the flood crashing downstream already.
But we don’t get to that point without the waters of winter: the accumulating snowpack, the frozen surfaces, the rivers’ coldest flow.
Now? We’re lucky to have any flow at all. What lurks outside our boundaries threatens to siphon off even that minuscule stream.
We have work to do. It helps to keep in mind what a truly healthy world would look like. Today’s work reminds us just how beautiful, and how rewarding, such a world could be.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
