Unsurprisingly, the rain forecast for this day’s early-morning hours failed to materialize. Predictions are still for five inches of snow from today into tomorrow, but it seems unlikely. Yes, there are strands and bands of clouds everywhere, but they fail to conceal the bright blue of the skies or the abundant sun.

It’s true that the clouds stacking themselves atop each other to the west/northwest could in fact produce something, and in truth, I expect they will — just nothing like the five inches being forecast. I would be delighted to be proven wrong; the land needs the snow desperately now, and so do the area watersheds.

This has alway been a land of four discrete seasons, each easily distinguishable from the others. Oh, there’s always been plenty of overlap, true; at eight thousand feet above sea level, surrounded by mountains that rise three, four, five thousand feet higher and more, it would be strange if the seasons did not flow into each other’s spaces frequently.

But what we have now are whole seasons near to vanishing entirely, their spaces occupied by that which does not belong there.

It’s always struck me how the world speaks of spring and fall: both seasons fully actualized in their own right, yet nearly always cast in terms of thresholds between winter and summer. It’s as though the latter two are somehow more real, as though their extremes of temperature and weather make them the true markers of place and time, while the former are simply those unsettled spaces between them, interstitial, neither one nor the other and therefore not entirely something of their own, either.

In this place, though, both spring and fall have always been possessed of their own unique identities and animating spirits. Yes, we get heavy snows in April and October, and eighty-degree days, too. But spring used to bring us a the clearly identifiable features of wind and mud, while fall was all clarity and light.

The latter still tends to hold, at least in part. For the former? Oh, we have plenty of wind, except that it’s increasingly a year-round phenomenon now. Mud? that would require a thaw, which in turn would require the snowpack that here is currently measured in the negative, a snowpack that in its own turn would require, well, snow.

And there is precious little of that here anymore. It’s hard for the atmosphere to create snow in a land that is now often seventy degrees in January.

For folks unfamiliar with what our climate should be, that’s fifty to seventy degrees and more too high. When you read about the dangers of the Earth warming by a degree or so, it may not seem like much in the abstract . . . but this is what it produces, and it’s deadly, a climate not undergoing change or in crisis, but already in collapse.

Outside the window, the earth is bare, the wan gray-gold of autumn’s dormancy; the trees remain bare, although those that have managed to survive have mostly begun budding out far too early. There are remnant patches of white on the highest peaks, but they, too, are mostly tundra at the top, with slopes and ridgelines increasingly less evergreen by the year. Drought, aridification, incursions by tree fungus and moths and bark beetle infestations have metaphorically felled whole stands of conifers and aspens and oak [“metaphorically,” because the dead trees are still standing, but they will not bear live needles or leaves again]. As a result, the mountains seem brown, even gray, in a way they did not only half a decade ago.

And in truth, at this moment? They should be fully blanketed in white, with the teal blues of the evergreens showing through here and there. We haven’t had that all winter.

We used to know what these so-called threshold seasons would bring, but even that is predictable only in its unpredictability now. We knew what we could expect from fall:  early frost and sunset fire, followed not long thereafter by the first heavy snow of the year. And we knew would would ensue in spring: regular snow in the first half, giving way to the trickster winds that attend the thaw [and, of course, the mud]. Instead, we have two seasons that are less thresholds any longer but the dominant seasons here, as though summer and winter are merely the placeholders between them — and then in name only, as our temperatures and weather seem to become one year-long contradictory mass of damaging conditions.

This world needs protection; more, it needs healing. Much is made of the word stewardship, but humanity collectively has failed that so utterly that it’s not enough now. Now, the Earth needs our resistance, our defense, our willingness to fight on her behalf . . . and our willingness to do the hard work of rescue, of rehabilitation, of recovery and restoration in the form of healing.

If we are to survive, the planet must, too. And we are out of time, whether or not most of the world acknowledges that terrifying truth.

But such work has never been more dangerous — to us, to each other, to the land and waters and air and sky, to our plant and animal relatives themselves. We have to be strong, and we have to brave, but neither comes easily in times such as these. Sometimes, we need a little help — a talismanic layer of added spiritual protection, and a reminder of why we do what must do.

This week’s Friday Feature masterwork is an example of just a reminder. It’s the final work remaining in Wings’s limited signature series of big, bold, traditional shield-style necklaces, The Four Seasons. This one was created for fall, in autumnal shades and spirits, but as I noted above, those shades [and, increasingly, those spirits] suit spring just well, too. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:

Fall:  Early Frost and Sunset Fire Necklace

The light of a high-desert autumn sets the land aflame amid the chill dance of Fall: early frost and sunset fire. Wings calls to the circle leaf and flame, frost and light, with this extraordinary necklace, a medicine shield manifest in the shades of season and time, wrought as a tribute to the winds and the Sacred Directions. The pendant, large and protective as any true warrior’s shield, is hand-wrought of heavy eighteen-gauge sterling silver, all solidity and substance, yet scalloped freehand with an edge of fantastic delicacy. It’s set with nine spectacular stones: At the cardinal directions sit four large teardrops of stunningly webbed Red Creek jasper in all the shades of autumn leaves, crimson and gold, bronze and hints of remnant green; at the ordinal points, four smaller Red Creek jasper teardrops in beautifully marbled hues; at the center, a single incredible square of agatized ocean jasper, lacy bands of frost tracing a path across the last of the earth’s green. Between the cabochons, solitary fall wildflowers bloom, traces of frost falling around them. The pendant hangs from a simple flared bail stamped freehand in an Eye of Spirit motif formed of single stamps, conjoined, in a radiant design of sunrise over clouds. Strung through the bail is dazzling strand of beads in natural materials, each one selected and matched for color: large rounds of ocean jasper in greens and rusts and pearly whites extending into similarly-sized Red Creek jasper spheres, each segment separated by single beads of faceted high-grade gray moonstone; lengths of medium-sized golden fossilized coral, Red Creek jasper, ocean jasper, and scarlet red-willow wood spheres, with more icy gray moonstone rondels as separators; then segments of frosty matte sardonyx and tiny round ocean jasper anchors, separated by sterling silver doughnut rondels. Beads are strung over extra-sturdy tri-ply foxtail made of heavy nylon, specially treated and encased in metal, then silver-plated for color matching; findings are sturdy sterling silver assemblies. Pendant including bail hangs 6.75″, 6.25″ excluding bail, and is 6.5″ across at the widest point; the bail is .5″ long by 9/16″ across at the widest point; center cabochon is 7/8″ square; cardinal cabochons are 2″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point; ordinal cabochons are 1.5″ long by 5/8″ across; bead strand is 22″ long, excluding findings. [All dimensions approximate.] Designed jointly by Wings and Aji; fourth in The Four Seasons Series. Other views shown above, below, and at the link.

Sterling silver (setting and findings);
Red Creek jasper; agatized ocean jasper (pendant cabochons); tri-ply silver-plated foxtail (to hold beads);
Red Creek jasper; ocean jasper; red willow wood; gray moonstone; fossilized coral; sardonyx; sterling silver (beads)
$2,000 plus shipping, handling, and insurance

This is an extraordinary work. It’s big, yes — almost seven inches long, including the bail, and six and a half inches across at the center — but what’s most notable about it is the way it assumes the form and shape and seemingly protective properties of a shield. It’s spiritual armor against all that would do violence to our world now, reinforcing our senses of bravery and wisdom and humility and generosity, reminding us that we must all be ready to stand up, to step forward, to defend each other.

Tuesday night showed us how it’s done: Congressman Al Green of Texas, the only person in a national legislative assembly of five hundred and thirty-five members who was willing to stand up and say what must be said.

And he is being punished for it, by those allegedly among his own.

This is not how our world survives, nor how we survive, either: by being so cowed, so willingly intimidated, so complicit that we would allow a Black elder to risk his own well-being, unsupported by anyone, simply to point out a truly vile lie . . . and then to allow him to be penalized for speaking the simplest of truths.

In this land, spring is not coming; it’s already here, and then some. For much of this society’s population, it’s also Lent, a time of sacrifice and reflection leading up to their tradition’s holiest day. It would seem to be a perfect time to nurture spiritual growth, but there can be no growth in drought, and no thriving in a world beset by death and destruction.

In our way, every time, every season, every day is sacred. We are charged with walking the path our ancestors laid out for us, and living according to the teachings that, by way of the gift of the spirits, they handed down to us. Only by doing so can we say that ours is a life well lived.

But what that means changes with circumstance. And these circumstances are very dangerous indeed. We must take our cues from the power and medicine of the seasons now, of the Earth as she fights daily for her own survival, and ours.

This is a time to defend and a time to heal, to shield the innocent, to wield the truth as medicine. And we must stand with the elders willing to speak those hard truths now.

~ 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.