We are supposed to have snow before the day is out.

According to the forecast, it won’t be much — an inch or two at most by tomorrow night. But at dawn this morning, even that seemed unlikely in the extreme, given the clarity of the skies.

Now, at midday, soft gray clouds have begun to coalesce overhead, and the squalls are already racing around the ridgelines from southwest and northwest to meet in the east.

And just as I wrote the last sentence, the winds kicked up their customary chaotic activity, likely setting the stage for the rest of the day. The saving grace is that it will likely be these same winds that drive the storm to us, and for that we have to be grateful. Creation is a wild, even violent act, but here it’s softened by the sacred green waters of renewal and rebirth.

This week’s Friday Feature consists of two matched works, a cuff bracelet and a pair of earrings — not created together, but built around stones from the same parcel, and clearly intended to belong to each other — that embody these cold and powerful waters of spring. In this place, even with watershed levels as low as this current twelve-hundred-year drought has reduced them, the thaw still send what remains racing downstream hard and fast. They are a force to be reckoned with, and to be engaged with respect, but their power reminds us that creation is not a gentle event, nor is birth or rebirth. Even so, what results from such forces is beauty, medicine . . . the power of the sacred itself.

We begin with the cuff, the first of these that Wings created. It was a work to honor the sacred spring that can be found in so many of the area watersheds, a place where the First Medicine holds even greater powers of healing. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:

Sacred Spring Cuff Bracelet

This is a land of holy waters, of great river and sacred lake, of sacred spring and the First Medicine in its most powerful forms. With this cuff, Wings pays tribute to the local watersheds and the hot springs  arising from them, delivering healing medicine to those who seek their gifts. The band is wrought of solid sterling silver of a decently heavy gauge, just light enough to allow the wearer to adjust it with some ease. The entire outer surface is hammered by hand, then buffed to a high polish, evoking the appearance of local waters in the sunlight. The focal stone is a freeform cabochon of Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado, nearly half-moon in shape, manifest in the rich blues and greens of lake and river and hot spring, too, and finely webbed with the reds and golds of shoal and riverbank and local clay. It rests in a bezel wrought entirely by hand, each segment saw-cut individually, filed smooth, and shaped to the stone, the whole edged with a slender strand of twisted silver. Along each edge of the inner band, repeating lines of half-moon crescents echo the shape of the stone and the pull of the tides. Band is 6″ long by roughly 3/8″ wide; Bezel is 1-1/8″ long by 11/16″ high’ cabochon is 7/8″ long by 1/2″ high at the highest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at top and at the link. Cuff coordinates with Sacred Waters, Sacred Sky earrings, set with stones from the same parcel; together, they would create a subtly powerful, classic matched set.

Sterling silver; natural Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado
$1,400 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Cripple Creek turquoise tends toward paler blues, a color ensured by the microscopic white host-rock stippling that infuses most specimens throughout, but it also occasionally appears, as these specimens do, with floating overlays of rich greens. That area of Colorado is known for geological formations of gold, silver, lead, and zinc, and zinc is what forms that material known as faustite that gives some turquoise its electric lime green color. The green in this stone is deep and rich, seeming to float across the blues beneath, marbled with the earthy reds that are also a hallmark of the area. The hammerwork of the cuff’s band creates a perfect backdrop for this particular stone, evoking the light upon the local waters and the ethereal shimmer it produces.

Today’s second featured work is the coordinating pair of earrings — again, created later and entirely independently, yet to close in shape and shade and animating spirit as to be unquestionably a match. They remind us of the inextricable intertwining of sacred waters, sacred sky, into cycles of breath and life itself. From its description in the Earrings Gallery:

Sacred Waters, Sacred Sky Earrings

In these lands, rain and that which brings it is life, breath, medicine: sacred waters, sacred sky. With these earrings, Wings honors the turquoise blues of the alpine desert skies, the marbled white webbing of clouds that become the storm, and the rich greens and browns of this thriving mountainous land. Each compact drop is built around a freeform cabochon of natural Cripple Creek turquoise from Colorado, part of a larger parcel of cabochons acquired some years ago. These stones are beautifully matched, but not mirror images; their vaguely triangular shapes show material of classic sky blue, with Cripple creek’s hallmark white host-rock stippling and patchy bronze and green matrix. Each cabochon is set into a low-profile scalloped bezel edged with a slender strand of twisted silver, with an organic bezel backing that extends at the top into hand-drilled tabs, through which are threaded sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead earring wires. At the lower end, that backing extends at side angles into two scalloped arc, saw-cut freehand, to accommodate the two hand-made ingot ball beads overlaid atop them. Each bead is stamped with a flowering motif, raindrops as petals opening. Earrings hang 1-1/8″ long by 3/4″ to 7/8″ wide at their respective widest points; cabochons are 3/4″ long by roughly 1/2″ across at the widest point; ingot beads are 3/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Earrings coordinate with Sacred Spring cuff bracelet, set with stones from the same parcel; together, they would create a subtly powerful, classic matched set.

Sterling silver; natural Cripple Creek turquoise
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

I love this pair, even as a standalone work. The freeform cabochons are close enough in shape to match, yet each is unique; the blues are rich and the bright green overlay mysteriously beautiful. Perhaps my favorite element, though, is the ingot drops that hang from the outer edges of each earring, silver raindrops flowering in air and light, just as the earth that receives them will do in the days and weeks to come.

As I’ve been writing, the two lines of storm have indeed met in the east; a powerful snow squall envelops Pueblo Peak now. The winds are fierce, the sky a strange mix of high blues and lowering gray, and a spreading green snakes across the earth beneath. Above us, the alpine lake will be thawing; the river below us is already running hard and fast, if not particularly high.  These are all the sacred green waters of renewal and rebirth, and our world will, for a time, at least, breathe more freely again.

~ Aji

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.